Bliss

by Hilary Fields

  Sera had to look her best, because tonight would officially be her first real date.

  She still couldn’t believe Robbie Markham had asked her out. Robbie was cool. Robbie was an upperclassman and played for practically all the varsity teams. Robbie had a coif of floppy black hair that shaded one soulful brown eye, and when he flipped it back in that signature Robbie Markham way, all the girls would sigh. What’s more, Robbie Markham had, until this week, never deigned to notice Sera was alive. When he’d asked her to be his date to the semi-formal, Sera, who’d planned to boycott the event in favor of a night spent attempting to break the hard-crack boundary on her so-far-spotty candy-making efforts, had literally looked around behind her. But she’d had a wall of lockers at her back, and Robbie, smiling his crooked Robbie Markham™ smile, had filled her field of vision, waiting for her answer with the cocky assurance of a guy whose face was likely to appear on nearly every page of the upcoming yearbook.

  “So, um… Sarah, right?”

  Sera had nodded, not daring to scare him off by correcting him. Her palms felt sweaty, so she hid them behind her back, pressed flat against the cool blue-painted metal of the lockers.

  “You, ah, wanna hit the semi with me?”

  Sera had felt like she’d been hit by a semi. She honestly wasn’t sure if she wanted to go. She didn’t know Robbie. Dancing made her queasy. And damn it, she’d really been looking forward to seeing if she could get those caramels to firm up properly. But one didn’t say no to a date with Robbie Markham. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience; even Sera could see that. Caramels could wait.

  “Sure,” she’d croaked. She’d really, really wanted to throw up.

  But she’d said she would show up, and now Robbie would be meeting her at the school in less than half an hour.

  Wonder if Pauline will notice if I take a nip from her liquor cabinet, Sera thought as she made ready to leave. Pauline kept some Kentucky bourbon and a bottle of single malt around somewhere, she knew from previous raids. While a shot of sour, fiery Maker’s Mark was more likely to set her stomach roiling than settle the butterflies currently occupying it, Sera was willing to risk it.

  Pauline, unfortunately, was blocking the booze. When Sera emerged from her small bedroom into their living room, she found her aunt sprawled out on her settee, a big Victorian affair draped in lace doilies and tassels, reading her tattered copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex for the fourteenth time. Seeing her niece decked out in gay cotton print and dark, dramatic makeup, she leapt to her feet.

  “Rite of passage!” she cried, throwing her hands to the sky and planting her bare, toe-ringed feet in a wide stance. “Don’t move a muscle, kiddo. Let me get my camera. I gotta record this for posterity.” Pauline dashed to her bedroom, returning almost instantly with the battered Nikon she’d toted across four continents in her days as a cultural anthropologist. She fiddled briefly with the lens cap and the focus. “The lucky man’s not picking you up?” she asked, pouting, though Sera had already told her as much at least twice.

  “Guys don’t do that anymore, Aunt Paulie,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We’re meeting in front of the school.”

  “Shame,” Pauline continued, clicking her tongue. “I’d have loved to get one of those cheesecake prom night pics of the two of you, even if it is horribly 1950s of me.” She sighed and shook her head. “Oh well. This’ll have to do. Strike a pose, Baby-Bliss. Make like it’s the luckiest night of this young fella’s life—because with you as his date, he damn well better think so.”

  Sera managed a pained grimace for the camera.

  “Um… Aunt Pauline?” she ventured when the Nikon was safely stowed again. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, Baby-Bliss, anything,” her aunt replied, giving her a squeeze as Sera reached for her denim jacket and checked her reflection one last time in the mirror by the front door. Is my eyeliner still crooked? she agonized briefly, but decided she couldn’t afford to start all over again. By the time she was done, Robbie would have given up on her and gone inside, and she really didn’t want to look like the lonely dork wandering the halls seeking her date when he’d probably already be hooking up with somebody more popular. Still, her uncertainty was so paralyzing it was hard to get her feet to move. She needed help. She wanted her mother like never before, but her mom had been gone for three years, and she couldn’t help Sera now. Now there was only Aunt Pauline, who tried hard but who had the maternal instincts of a burlesque queen.

  Oh, Mom, she thought, aching. What I wouldn’t give for one of your hugs and pigtail pulls right now. Sera’s eyes stung with sudden longing, but she refused to cry and ruin her eyeliner. She’d wept for her parents long enough—so long she’d missed a good portion of her freshman year, and been so mute with grief even after she returned to school that she’d barely managed to make friends. Things had slowly improved and, Sera hoped, were about to get even better now that she’d been noticed by one of the most popular boys at school. She couldn’t afford to mess this up.

  But Sera didn’t know how to ask Pauline, who had been born bursting with sexuality, what she wanted to ask. So she just blurted it out.

  “Aunt Pauline, what do I do?”

  Pauline’s hawklike features crinkled in surprise before realization set in. “You mean, when you’re with the boy? Oh, that’s simple. You do what you want to do, Bliss. No more, no less.” She touched her niece’s cheek fondly. “You don’t need a refresher on our safe sex talk, do you?”

  Sera frantically shook her head. That’d been one conversation she wouldn’t soon forget. Souvenirs from that discussion had included a rainbow assortment of condoms, a semester-long self-defense class, and a prescription for birth control pills Sera had no intention of filling until she was in college.

  “Don’t forget you’re a strong, confident, beautiful young woman,” Pauline reminded her, resettling Sera’s denim jacket collar so that it lay properly against her neck. “You deserve the best. After all, kiddo, you’re my niece.” She drew Sera into a fierce, patchouli-scented hug. “Go get ’em, Tiger.”

  But it was Robbie who turned out to be the tiger, growling and nuzzling her neck like a wild animal the minute he’d shuffled her through their obligatory first dance. In an alarmingly chaperone-free corner of the gymnasium, he boxed Sera in and began smothering her surprised mouth with deep, slurping, porno-inspired kisses. In the background, Hanson’s “MMMBop” played at deafening volume, further nauseating Sera.

  Sera pulled back. “Robbie—Robbie, whoa!” She grabbed his hand, shocked, and yanked it away from where it was crushing her breast. “What are you doing?” Robbie’s fingers abandoned the battle for her boob and swooped down to make a grab for her butt. Before she could so much as gasp her shock, he’d gotten a handful and squeezed—hard. His mouth dive-bombed her neck, sucking in a way she was sure must leave hickeys.

  Hickeys! she thought, horrified. God, everyone will see! She’d always found love bites revolting when girls walked down the halls proudly displaying them like brands of possession by the strutting, preening boyfriends who strolled beside them. And though most girls at their school might kill to sport a Robbie Markham™ hickey, Sera was becoming surer by the moment that she wasn’t one of them.

  Robbie began pressing his lower body against hers, and Sera grew even uneasier. There was a hardness there, poking her, and she didn’t think it was his belt buckle.

  “Robbie, stop it!” she cried, pushing against his chest. It took almost all her strength to create some breathing room between them, and his hand was still kneading her ass like a baker with a vendetta against his dough. “What are you doing?” she asked again. She swiped a trembling hand across her slobber-spattered lips.

  “What’s wrong, babe?” he asked glassily.

  Sera had already tasted the stale malt liquor on his breath, so she guessed he’d been hitting the forty ounces from the corner bodega pretty hard. Maybe if he’d offered me a forty, she thought, I’d be
enjoying this more. What was wrong with her? Shouldn’t she be thrilled to have the hottest boy in school mauling her—and what’s more, mauling her in public where everyone could see? But she wasn’t. “Skeeved out” was the term that came to mind. Of all the romantic fantasies she’d entertained—Robbie parading her down the halls proudly, Robbie dipping her expertly in a dance—this definitely hadn’t been one of them.

  “Um… could we, just, you know… slow things down a little?” she squeaked.

  Robbie looked confused. “Why would we want to slow down? Speeding up is the fun part.” He bumped his crotch against hers illustratively. Those dreamy brown eyes—eyes all the girls sighed over—were glazed over in a way Sera didn’t like. “I know you know what I’m talking about.” He smirked. “Don’t worry, babe. I’m all about giving a girl like you what she needs.”

  “A… girl like me?” she sputtered.

  “Yeah. A girl with experience.” He squeezed her butt meaningfully, trying to move in close again.

  “Experience?” Sera’s brow furrowed. “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded with a bit more heat.

  Robbie’s confused expression was darkening to sullen as the wheels turned visibly in his mind. Why did I never notice how dumb he is? Sera wondered. “Come on, babe,” he pouted. “Don’t go all frigid on me. Everyone at school knows you’re that sex professor’s kid. Bet she taught you some hot shit. Show me what you got, sex kitty,” he muttered, making little “meow” sounds Sera found revolting. “Give me what I came for. C’mon, kiss me.” His lips loomed, wet and reddened.

  Sera shoved harder. “Get off me, Robbie,” she hissed. She looked around, not wanting to call attention to her predicament—the whole school would be gossiping about it if they saw her wrestling with Robbie like an outraged virgin—never mind that I am an outraged virgin, Sera thought hysterically—but hoping for a chaperone who could break things up without making it her fault. Then his words began to really penetrate.

  “Wait a minute, what do you mean, what you came for?” she asked. She tried to make her voice firm, but it wouldn’t fully obey her. She pried his hand off her ass and took a step sideways, out of his grasp. “I thought…” Sera wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. She darted a glance her date’s way, and her stomach clenched. Robbie looked pissed. No, he looked thwarted, and from the tightness in his face, it wasn’t an experience he was used to. When Robbie Markham made a pass, girls were supposed to swoon.

  “What, you thought I liked you?” he sneered, looking her up and down disdainfully. Sera felt every imperfection cataloged in that stare, from her short stature to her less-than-skinny frame and hair that just wouldn’t “do the Rachel” no matter how hard her stylist tried.

  Then Robbie did something that hurt worse. He started to laugh.

  He guffawed in big, incredulous whoops that began to draw looks from across the dance floor. “You thought—what, that you were going to be my girlfriend now? Oh my God. Seriously? Get over yourself. I don’t even remember your name, freak show. I just want what you give up for all the guys.” He grabbed her crotch, and Sera’s mind went blank with horror. Her knee, however, had absorbed Pauline’s lessons in self-defense well, and it gave Robbie Markham’s balls the kiss he’d been asking for—times a hundred.

  Sera left Robbie squealing on the gymnasium floor, clutching his family jewels and encircled by a crowd of gawking classmates.

  Returning to school on Monday was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She’d spent the weekend avoiding her aunt’s avid questions about her date and obsessing over whether she’d committed social suicide as badly as she feared. But all seemed well; no one harassed her or even mentioned the incident…

  Until she opened her locker after third period.

  Only to be deluged by a hard rain of dildos.

  Dozens upon dozens of them poured from the small space out onto the linoleum floor, bouncing and rolling as, behind her, Sera heard her fellow students howling with laughter. Her face flamed bright red and she spun around.

  Robbie stood surrounded by a gaggle of his groupies, arms folded over the front of his letterman jacket. What felt like half the school had gathered in that third-floor hallway, apparently alerted ahead of time that something was afoot. Some of them were laughing so hard they had tears running down their cheeks. But Robbie just glared at her. “Figured these must be more your style, freak show,” he taunted. “Well, have fun with them. Sure as shit no boy at this school’s ever going to ask your frigid ass out again.”

  For the rest of her high school career, Sera had been known as The Ball Buster, and true to Robbie’s prediction, no one had asked her out. She had, however, delighted her girlfriends with buckets of delicious, perfectly formed caramels.

  She had also developed a lifelong aversion to sex toys.

  Just then, Sera’s iPod took it upon itself to start playing Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself,” jolting her back to the present—the store, Santa Fe, the fact that she was twenty-nine years old and no longer thought Betsey Johnson the height of fashion. It was a good feeling. Hell, it was the best feeling ever. That’s not me anymore, she reminded herself. I’m sober, I’m strong, and no asshole guy’s ever going to intimidate me like that again.

  Ba-dadadadada-DA-da…

  The old familiar guitar riff spiked her adrenaline. Damn straight. I’m a woman of substance, about to be a small business owner. And Robbie Markham is probably fat, bald, and addicted to Cialis.

  Without volition, Sera’s head started bobbing and her shoulders started wiggling. As she rose to her feet, her toes tapped in the scuffed combat boots she’d worn for cleaning today—grandchildren to her old high school clompers. She started humming along with the lyrics.

  “When there’s nothing to lose, and there’s nothing to prove…,” crooned Billy.

  Nothing to lose, indeed. But perhaps quite a lot to prove.

  “Fuck it,” she growled.

  Sera grabbed the nearest dildo—a massive, fleshy pink dong studded with what she assumed were pleasure nubs, though they looked more like alien warts. She cranked up the volume on her iPod as high as it would go and started belting out the words to the song.

  Using the wiener as a microphone.

  “Oh, oh, oh, oh!” she yelled along with Billy, making a brat-punk face. And again, “Oh, oh, oh, oh!”

  And suddenly Serafina was dancing. With herself.

  The shop’s newly cleared floorboards served as her stage, and Sera let her freak flag fly. She strutted and whirled, doing her best Billy Idol impression. Lip curl: check. Head bob: check. Fist pump: oh hell yeah. It was just her, Billy, and the empty store, having a private moment. Sera’s chin-length hair flew about her sweat-dampened cheeks as she rocked out with her cock out. Dust rose in little puffs around her despite the sweeping she’d done, and the sun, breaking out from behind the clouds, speared in through the front window, giving Sera her own personal spotlight.

  She shimmied her shoulders, raised her fists, and pumped her arms above her head until she was sweating as her Idol commanded. Billy reached the chorus, rasping and growling into her ears, reminding Sera she didn’t need anyone’s approval; she could meet her own needs. “With my record collection and the mirror’s reflection…,” she howled into the dong.

  At the mention of mirrors, Sera’s glance caught the one along Pauline’s back wall. She strutted over to it, channeling Billy’s mojo, wailing the words of his hit into her improvised mike.

  Its reflection, however, showed she was not dancing with herself. She was performing for an audience of two.

  Or at least, one human, and one very curious puppy.

  Asher and Silver were arrested just inside her doorjamb, both sets of eyes wide, both jaws unhinged.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” Sera screamed as she spun to face Asher. The dildo, sweat-slicked from her impromptu performance, slipped the bonds of her surprise-slackened fingers and went sailing across the store.

  Smacking
her landlord—bull’s-eye!—right in the chest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Plunk! With a rubbery plop, the dong bounced off Asher’s pecs and landed on the floor. Silver—who seemed to have grown at least six inches since last she’d seen him—growled and pounced on it with delighted fury, grabbing it in his tiny teeth and gnawing for all he was worth. His husky head shook happily as he did his doggy damnedest to subdue his prey.

  Sera yanked out her ear buds and came to a crashing halt in the middle of the store. Her hands flew to her lips in horror. Of all the ways she’d envisioned her next encounter with Asher Wolf occurring, this hadn’t even made the top five hundred.

  “Don’t stop on my account,” Asher said mildly.

  “Jesus, Asher,” she swore, “don’t sneak up on a girl like that!” Her cheeks bloomed with color, as they seemed so wont to do in his presence. She slunk over to where Silver was enjoying his unexpected snack. “C’mere, boy, drop the weenie,” she cajoled, but the pup was having none of it. He growled again and bared his teeth around his prize, backing up behind Asher to ward off her incursion.

  Sera gave it up as a bad job. No way was she going to have a tug of war over a wiener with a half-pint puppy in front of her gorgeous—and too damn kissable—landlord. She pushed her unruly hair out of her eyes and dared a look up at Ash. He appeared to be biting his lip to keep from cracking up. An answering grin snuck up on her own lips. “Aw, shaddup,” she said finally, though he hadn’t spoken. “Let’s just pretend you never saw that, okay?”