Nu Alpha Omega

by H. Claire Taylor

  “First of all, my uncle’s a mega successful, well-known lawyer, so we’re fine. Secondly, we’ve talked about this, Jess. This is for your benefit. So you don’t have to worry at all about who you surround yourself with. We have to vet. And after what you told me about Courtney, I knew I needed to give her special attention. Judith may trust her, but you and I know better.”

  “I think I trust her, Kate.”

  Kate’s head jerked back. “Why?”

  “Why else would she do all this? She’s not a trained spy, and before you ask about a hostage situation, I already looked into it, and her brother was trolling the Asian girl from our graduating class just yesterday.”

  Kate’s lips parted just the slightest bit as her brows pinched together in the center. “I don’t know that I follow. But even still, you are too trusting, Jessica. That’s why you need me to do this. Think of all the times you’ve been burned in your life. You may not like the process, but it’s necessary if you’re going to have a safe environment where it’s not leaked to the media every time you take a loud shit.”

  “A loud shit?”

  Kate nodded solemnly. “You’re a loud shitter, Jessica.”

  Jessica sighed. “It just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Maybe you should see a doctor, then.”

  “No. Not … not that. The hazing. I can’t be a part of it. It seems too mean.”

  Kate threw her hands onto her hips. “Then don’t be a part of it! I mean, you basically already aren’t.”

  Jessica’s next words caught in her throat, but she managed to force them out. “No. I don’t think I want to be a part of the sorority if this is what we do to people. I’ve been bullied and humiliated my whole life. I agreed to this because I want friends. And now people I’ve never met are coming and asking to be my friend and this is how they’re treated?”

  “It’s necessary.”

  Jessica rubbed her hand down her face. “I know. I know. And I know in some respects, you’re right about all of it.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Jessica sighed. “I don’t know if I can be a part of this anymore, Kate. A part of NAO.”

  Finally, Kate’s certainly cracked. “But … NAO is about you. It’s about worshipping you and celebrating feminism and if you leave—”

  “You can still do those things. I won’t stop you. But I— I need some time to think about it. I need a few days away. Can you just promise to press pause on the torture until I decide what I’m going to do?”

  Kate nodded and swallowed hard, her usually squinty eyes large and round, and Jessica exhaled and headed back inside.

  “Let’s go to your place,” she said once she was in her bedroom.

  Mason looked up. “Whatever you say, Christ-lady.” He stood and threw his guitar over his shoulder.

  “It’s not whatever I say,” she barked back.

  His green eyes shot open, his eyebrows flying up toward his perfectly positioned hairline. “Okay. So you don’t want to go?”

  “No, I do want to go. It’s just not whatever I say.” She grabbed her backpack and threw a few essentials inside.

  When she tossed her toothbrush into the front pocket, he said, “You’re staying overnight?”

  She whirled around to face him. “Yeah, you got a problem with that?”

  “No, not at all. It’s just we’ve never actually slept over with each other. In the same bed.”

  “If you’re not comfortable sleeping in the same bed as your girlfriend, I’ll take the couch.”

  “You kidding?” He closed the space between and pulled her into his arms, her backpack awkwardly sandwiched between their bellies so that she couldn’t feel his mediocre penis against her. “I saw the way you stood up to Kate out there. If I have my way, there’ll be no sleeping.”

  She stared into his beautiful sea foam eyes and thought, What the hell? It’d been a night. She might as well give sex a shot. If it proved impossible, the night was already shit, so what was one more personal catastrophe? And if it worked and he didn’t shout anything too disturbing about her Dad, maybe the night could get better.

  “What are we waiting for, then?” she asked.

  Mason groaned and led her by the hand out to his truck.

  * * *

  The sexual tension on the ride over to Mason’s apartment was filled with Christian rock booming from his Bose sound system, and Jessica had to keep reminding herself that all the songs were about the men in her family. Otherwise, lyrics like, “pulse your light into me,” and “you know how and when to touch me, and just what I need,” left her feeling so eager for some release that she was fixing to tell Mason to pull over onto the shoulder, because they were going to give this banging thing a try in the Texan position—on her back, spread across the front seats, feet and hands bracing on opposite windows, ignoring seat buckles jabbing into her ribs while Mason went to town on her.

  “Looks like the old roommate’s gone,” he said, poking his head through the front door. “Hello?”

  No answer, so he held open the door and ushered Jessica inside.

  “Just the two of us,” he added.

  And just like that, as if those were magic words, Jessica started to second-guess sex with Mason. He was hot, sure, but was this really going to happen?

  He sure seemed convinced that it was, as he stripped off his shirt and discarded it on the tan shag carpet of his bedroom floor.

  But then he grabbed his guitar. “Before we do this, I want everything to be perfect. I wrote this song and immediately knew it was the one I wanted to play for you before our first time together. It’s called, ‘Dream Girl.’ ”

  Jessica closed the door behind her and then leaned her back against it, crossing her arms over her chest. “Okay. But that’s kind of weird.”

  Mason smiled shamelessly. “What can I say? You’re the muse that keeps on giving.”

  She groaned. “Okay, sure.”

  That was encouragement enough for him. His grin exposed his unbelievably aligned, white teeth, and he threw the guitar strap over his shoulder and, to Jessica’s surprise, dropped his drawers. Then, semi-erect penis flopping, he jumped onto the bed, reclining up against the wall, and he readied himself with a few strums.

  Man, I really need to be more careful about how I inspire people.

  “Mason, can we just slow it down for a second?”

  “Why? I’m dying over here. I need to feel what it’s like inside my gorgeous muse. I can’t even imagine the songs that will inspire.”

  “Neither can I.” Nor did she want to. “And is that all I am to you? A muse? I just hang around you, and you write songs about me and use them to get more fame for you?”

  He sat up straight. “Huh? Is that what you think?” He scooted his bare ass to the edge of the bed. “Jessica, no, no, no … You’re so much more than that to me.”

  “Then how come we’re been together for almost a year and you’ve never said you love me?”

  Mason paused, and a small, momentary tic took hold of his jaw. “I couldn’t love you. Not the right way. I’ve told you this. We’ve talked about this.”

  “No, I think you were right the first time. You told me that. We didn’t talk about it. You said, ‘Jessica, don’t fall in love with me.’ What am I supposed to say to that?”

  “I’m not worthy of your romantic love, Jessica, that’s what I mean! And for me to fall in love with you, to tell you I love you, who am I to think I’m worthy of reciprocation? My heart can’t even begin to contemplate you in a way that would allow me to truly love you the way you deserve. But I can worship you. That’s something I can do.”

  “Ew, gross. I don’t want to be worshipped. You know what?” She pushed off the wall and placed her hand on the door knob. “You’re just as bad as NAO. You tell me how I should feel, how you’re not worthy of me, how I should be worshipped, how I’m not equal. But what the hell about what I think in all this? You think putting me on a pedestal is the rig
ht thing to do? You know what people put on pedestals? Objects. Prized possessions. Vases … I guess—I’ve never owned a pedestal. Or a vase. Doesn’t matter. You might consider me your prized possession, Mason, but that still treats me like an object, and I think I’m tired of that. I’m tired of people projecting their bullshit onto me and keeping me just far enough away so they don’t risk realizing I’m not whatever they wanted me to be. I want someone to get to know me, god dammit! I don’t need another song about me. I don’t need another story told about me by someone who never listens to me and doesn’t know jack shit!”

  Mason sat silently, his shoulders deflating along with his dick. “You don’t think I know you?”

  Jessica chuckled humorlessly. “No. I don’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t’ve written an entire song about how I pray to God, because you’d know I don’t do that.”

  He held up a hand to stop her. Apparently she’d gone a shade too far. “Now, come on, Jessica. That’s not exactly what ‘Pray Street’ is about. It’s about—”

  “Oh shut it, Mason. Real art doesn’t need to be explained anyway.” She pulled open the door and Mason quickly asked, “Where are you going?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I can find someone in this insane state who’ll help me off my pedestal and have a real conversation with me.” She thought about slamming the door but decided against it, because, strangely, she wasn’t actually that angry. Just tired, maybe a little bored, probably sad.

  It wasn’t until she’d made it down the stairs and crossed the apartment complex to reach the front gate that she gave Mason’s question some serious thought. Where was she going? She lived in the NAO house, not a dorm, and even if she did want to get back to all her things, she’d have one heck of a time getting out there without a car.

  Mason’s apartment was close enough to campus that at least she wasn’t completely stranded. She could head to one of the twenty-four hour coffee shops, but she couldn’t sleep there, and sleeping was the only thing in the world she knew for certain she wanted just then. A heavy sleep. One where she would wake up twelve hours later and not know what decade she was in until consuming a greasy plate of early afternoon Mexican food.

  She knew who she wanted to call, but when she pulled out her phone to actually dial up Miranda, she realized just how late it was and decided against having her friend drive on I-35 this late for a non-emergency. She pulled up her messenger to find someone else to send an SOS to, and the first name caught her eye. He would pick her up and give her a place to crash, no question there. But what would happen then?

  Only one way to find out, she supposed. She called him.

  “Hey, Jess, what’s up?”

  His voice sent warm waves through her body. “This is going to sound strange, but I’m stranded and I’m wondering if I can stay at your place for the night.”

  “Of course,” Chris replied without pause. “One condition, though.”

  She held her breath. “Yes?”

  “I’m gonna need you to explain exactly what the hell. First you’re asking whether Trent is a hostage, now you’re stranded. Something really fucked up must be happening in Asia if God’s left you so high and dry.”

  She laughed despite herself. It felt like someone had just thrown her a life preserver. Her eyes start to tear up and she instantly blamed PMS for that, since her period was only three weeks away and her body was still pretty much a mystery to her. “Sure. Um. Where do you live now?” She couldn’t believe she didn’t know. It’d been that long.

  “University Lofts. Where are you? I can pick you up.”

  “No, it’s fine, I can walk.”

  “Psh. Like hell. I’m not letting you walk around this town by yourself at night. Just today I saw someone double fisting an Old English and a cell phone behind the wheel of a car. And if you’re wondering the same thing I was when I saw it, I can tell you that no, the two impairments don’t offset. Now where are you?”

  She sighed. “Springview apartments.”

  “Oh damn. That shithole? Doesn’t matter. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  She hung up the phone and slipped it back into her pocket before finding a seat on a large rock just outside the gates. She closed her eyes and waited for the familiar sound of Chris’s HEMI to emerge in the distance.

  “I thought University Lofts was the other way,” Jessica said, looking around. The trees and buildings looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite match them to any specific location. For some reason, her mind associated them with Mooretown, not San Marcos. But it was late.

  “We’re not going to my place yet. There’s something I need to do first.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’ll see.”

  For some reason, she didn’t feel the need to inquire further. She trusted Chris. If he needed to do something, then she’d go along for the ride.

  As the cab fell silent, a song on the radio caught her attention. She recognized it immediately. “Whoa. Is that …” She turned it up. Huh. She could have sworn it was Mason’s.

  Chris reached between them and held up his phone, where the music was queued up. “I thought you should know. Miranda sent me these songs. I almost didn’t believe it when I heard it.”

  “It sounds exactly like ‘Jesus Thing,’ except … Who’s Jimmy? These lyrics don’t make any sense.”

  “Yeah, Mason’s version actually makes more sense than that one.” As they slowed to a red light, Chris tapped his phone screen and a new song started. “But this one … This one’s way better than Mason’s version.”

  “Version?” Jessica asked, confused. But as she listened to the music, something started to wake up in the back of her brain. “I thought this sounded familiar when Mason sang it. No, I’ve heard this one before. Before Mason, I mean.”

  Chris nodded. “Everyone has, Jess. Everyone has.”

  Still not entirely comprehending, Jess shook her head. “But how. How has no one called him out on this? Do you think he knows?”

  Shrugging, Chris turned up the song.

  Sure enough, the lyrics about hiking up a skirt actually had more sufficient context in this version than they did in “Christ Into Me.” Jessica sat and let it sink in. Finally, after what was apparently not the Mason White original “Rise from His Grave,” Jessica had heard enough. She turned down the volume. “Miranda knew right away. That’s what she was talking about with Quentin at the show.”

  “Yep.”

  “How long have you known?”

  The truck turned onto an old dirt road and Jessica became especially confused. They were definitely in Mooretown. Or rather, just outside of it. But how?

  “After Miranda and Quentin came to visit and you ran me off. I called Miranda the next day and she mentioned it.”

  But she was unable to ask any more follow-up questions, as Chris’s truck pulled off the road underneath the sky full of stars.

  They were here. The place where they’d first kissed, where he’d brought her after prom so they could try another first.

  “This is a dream.”

  Chris nodded slowly, killing the engine and turning his attention to her.

  “How long has this been a dream?” She looked to him for the answer, though why she should expect a dream to be that self-aware, she wasn’t sure.

  “Does it matter?”

  “I guess not.” But it sure would be a nice little treat if, say, the past twenty years turned out to be part of an elaborate dream.

  “It’s already set up,” he said. Then he nodded slightly toward the bed of the truck and she understood.

  She sighed. “I’ll give it a shot, but Jesus is probably going to show up.”

  Chris’s easy attitude hitched almost instantly. “Wait. You think… never mind. I guess it makes sense.” Then a devilish grin spread across his face. “Let’s see if we can beat him here.”

  She laughed and jumped out of the truck as fast as she could.

  Before she knew it,
or maybe it was in instantaneous dreamtime, she was on the mattress in the back of the truck. Only it wasn’t an air mattress. No, this wasn’t one of her ordinary shitty dreams. Her subconscious had gone all out with what she understood to be a memory foam mattress, fully dressed with feather-soft sheets and a warm quilt that provided the perfect weight once she was under it … and suddenly naked. But Chris was naked, too, and when he pressed up against her, she could feel that he was already itching to go. So was she.

  She stuck her head up and scanned for her half-brother. Could it be that this was simply a random lucid dream that he had nothing to do with? If so, better not blow it. This opportunity might not come up again.

  “Requesting permission,” Chris said.

  Huh. Was that really how her subconscious imagined this going? That didn’t seem like something she would particularly want him to say before sex. But as her mother always said, “There’s no accounting for what people like when they’re bangin’.”

  So she went with it, because apparently her subconscious thought it was hot. “Permission granted.”

  Chris didn’t waste another second. And in the unaccountable period of time that followed, everything else was exactly as she wanted, even if she’d never known she wanted it that way.

  Thank you, subconscious!

  Chris seemed to be in heaven, too, which was another detail she didn’t know would matter to her as much as it did. Man, her conscious brain didn’t know shit about her.

  And not once during the groaning and writhing and sweating and bliss did any of her family drop in. Although that was something even her conscious mind would want to avoid.

  Chris heaved on the mattress beside her once she’d reached the height of pleasure for time unknown and fallen slowly back to earth.

  “Can we do that again?” she asked.

  So they did.

  And again.

  And again.

  If she hadn’t already been sure it was a dream, managing that many orgasms in the course of a night would’ve clinched it.