by Cara McKenna
He tastes like beer and impatience. His fingers tangle in my hair, hands covering my ears so it sounds as if we’re underwater. I stand on my tiptoes and press myself against him and he’s warm and sturdy and goddamn if he’s not hard for me. I slide one palm down between us, pausing at his belt, needing some natural disaster to stop me from groping him.
Instead there’s a flare of music as someone exits the bar. We both freeze then pull away as an engine starts a few cars down. Patrick releases my head and pushes me back a pace by the shoulders before cramming his hands in his pockets. I meet his eyes and they look as wild as my own feel. I move away a little more and the car swings out, washing us in its headlight beams.
I clear my throat. “Friday at seven?”
He nods. He puts his hand on my back between my shoulder blades and steers me to my car. He watches me climb inside. He waves at me as I start to reverse and I wave back. I wonder if sexual frustration exacerbates blood-alcohol level. It sure feels that way. If I get pulled over on the short drive between here and my house I’ll have to say, “I had only two beers in two hours, officer, but then I made out with a lumberjack. You know how it is.”
I don’t get pulled over, though, and after a minute or two I feel perfectly sober if a bit suddenly exhausted.
One thing that both surprises and relieves me when I get home is how I feel about Jay. There he is, sitting on the couch with a copy of Wired on a pillow in his lap, TV tuned to a basketball game. And I’m attracted to him, just like always. Nothing about it feels diminished. Not cheapened, not weaker compared to what I felt with Patrick. It feels the same, except now there’s a deep vein of gratitude running through it. He stands and I dump my coat and bag and walk over and hug him—hard. He’s wearing my favorite sweater of his, soft merino wool that smells musty in the best way.
He strokes my hair. “How did it go?”
I sigh and sit back on the cushions and he mutes the television.
“It went pretty well.”
“Did anything happen?”
I nod. “Not a lot. Do you want to hear about it, or should I just keep it to myself?”
“No, I want to know,” Jay says. “This is part of our sex life, I think. I want to feel like there’s a place in it for me.”
I feel my brows rise; impressed or skeptical, I’m not sure which. Sometimes his reasoning is like magic to me.
“Okay,” I say. “Well, we split a pitcher and sort of flirted and then I kissed him. In the parking lot. We made out. It was pretty nice,” I admit, and smile, sheepish.
He nods. “How do you feel now?”
“I feel…I feel calmer. And satisfied.”
“Do you think that’s all you needed?”
I look around the living room with an ugly, selfish pang of anger. I hate the feeling and I tramp it down. I don’t have any right to feel as though Jay’s out to spoil my fun.
“I couldn’t tell you yet,” I say. “But right now I feel pretty…sated.” That word sounds stupid in my ears, as if it was never meant to be used in conversation.
Jay pats my knee, looking thoughtful. “Okay.”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel all right,” he says. “It was hard, when you were gone. Not knowing what was happening. But I lived through it and that feels all right.”
I laugh, a goofy, dorky laugh. “You are so level-headed it, like, breaks my brain.”
“I’m trying, anyhow.”
“We decided to meet up on Friday,” I say, plunging onward. “Is that cool?”
Jay blinks and nods and his face is impossible to read. It kills me that the thing I want so badly is hurting him. Not enough to give it up, though, I hear you saying.
“We should set some ground rules,” I offer. “Or you should. About what you’re comfortable with happening.”
“Everything but,” he says, clearly having given this some thought already. “Just not sex. Intercourse, I mean. I want that to be for us, only.”
“Fine with me.” As if I’m in a position to be anything aside from grateful.
He nods, relieved, I think. Then his brows bunch and a breath sputters through his lips.
“What?”
“This is going to sound really weird,” he says.
I laugh. “The bar’s been set pretty high lately, but go on, what’s weird?”
“When you were gone, and I was trying not to think about what you were doing…”
“Yeah?” I ask.
“It sort of…”
Made you die a little inside? Made you go shopping for guns online? Made you hate me, since it probably should?
“It sort of turned my crank,” Jay says.
“Oh.” My mouth freezes in its little round shape.
He laughs, seeming instantly relaxed. “Yeah, it kind of turned me on.”
“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Me neither,” he says.
“What about it?”
“I dunno… The idea of you with some other guy. Some guy wanting you and having to come to me to get permission.”
“Well, that’s a zillion times better than you feeling left out or insecure,” I say.
“Yeah. I bet that makes me some kind of Neanderthal pimp-wannabe sexist man-pig.”
“Beats cuckold,” I offer.
“Yeah.”
We sit for a while not saying anything, contemplating Jay’s revelation as we watch the Pistons play the Clippers with no sound.
I finally turn to him. “Do you want to have sex?”
“God, yeah.”
I grin. I’d been worried about that, afraid the next time we’d have sex it’d be a disaster, Jay understandably paranoid that I wasn’t thinking about him.
He tosses aside his magazine and pillow and pulls me onto his lap. I straddle him and we kiss, hard and ferocious. His hands cup my ass, tugging me close and I lock my thighs around his hips, feeling his excitement. I peel my sweater and shirt off, feel his hands on my breasts, squeezing and kneading. I unhook my bra and he wrestles it away, mouth hungry.
“Jay.”
His hips pump, stroking his arousal against mine. I can feel in his touch that he wants to be in charge. He gets this way sometimes and it’s fine by me. I like when he’s all possessive and rough. It usually means I’m naked and he’s dressed, as if I’m the vulnerable one being taken advantage of.
“Get your clothes off,” he mutters against my neck.
I slide off his lap and drop my pants, and my strategically homeliest underwear, and kick them away. He’s got his pajama bottoms on so he just pushes them down to free his erection and he strokes himself, studying me. I wait for permission, eyes on his hand.
He nods, slow and thoughtful, approving. “Fuck me.”
I straddle him again, running my lips up and down his cock a few times.
“Yeah.” His hands guide my hips, making the thrusts aggressive.
“I want it,” I say.
“What do you want?”
“Your cock.” I stare him dead in the eyes. I love when he looks this way, all flushed and mean. His lips are parted and his hazel eyes look green tonight and a little crazy. Horny Jay is worlds different from regular Jay. He’s like a secret only I get to enjoy. I know—my hypocrisy is staggering.
I angle my hips back as he reaches down and guides his head to my pussy. I sink down, slow, and his moan is harsh, giving me a happy chill.
His hands clamp my waist. “God, fuck me.”
There’s no one in my mind except Jay. I’m short and he’s fairly tall and I love how big he feels when I’m in his lap getting ordered around. I find my angles, giving him long pulls, ones that rub his shaft against my clit as I ride him.
“That’s right. Nice and rough.” He pretends this is all about him, but I know better.
I fuck him, hard and steady, hands on the back of the couch, smelling that wool sweater smell, that Jay smell, loving everything familiar and wonderful about this. He wants this to
be about power so I keep my romantic feelings to myself.
“Good,” he says. He always knows when I’m close from the way I move—short, greedy strokes, building all that heat and tension in my clit plus whatever intimate clues my pussy is giving him.
“Fuck my cock, Robin.”
I start to moan.
“Tell me how I feel.”
“You’re big,” I say. “Your cock’s so thick and hard.”
“That’s right.”
Technically I think Jay’s about average, but damn if I’ll let him think that when the flattery gets him so insanely hot.
“You’re so big.” I say it again and again, right against his ear, an incantation guaranteed to make Jay lose his mind. I whisper it over and over until the friction drives me crazy and I surrender, riding him slow and deep as the climax rips through my body. He comes too, pushing all the way in and holding there, groaning into my neck as he shoots.
I’m allowed to hold him now. I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face against his skin. He makes a happy, dirty sound and I laugh. Knowing I haven’t managed to break us is the sweetest relief imaginable. I give him a last squeeze and kiss his temple and get up. When I come back from the bathroom Jay’s got the sound turned back up on the TV. I tug my pants and shirt on and flop down next to him.
“What’s the score?” I ask.
“We’re up, seventy-one to sixty-five.”
“Nice.”
“I love you, Robin.”
I lean against him, glad he can’t see how broad my grin is. “I love you more, Jay Fleury.”
Chapter Three
All through work on Friday, I’m useless.
I own and manage a shop in Dereham’s little town center, selling stationery and bookbinding supplies and photo albums, upscale paper and calligraphy pens, those sorts of things. It’s called Roche Paper & Scissors, as my last name’s Roche, and if you’ve taken grade-school French you know what a terrible pun that is. I paid a local artist to paint the store’s name on the windows in an arch in gold and black, old-timey style. I’m here whenever it’s open, which is ten to six weekdays and noon to four Saturdays. On Fridays I do inventory and it takes me about ten times longer than usual today because I can’t keep any of the figures in my head for longer than a second.
Carrie, my only full-time employee, can tell something’s up. For a twenty-year-old who’s going to develop carpal tunnel from her incessant texting, she’s exceedingly perceptive.
“You want me to do any of that?” she asks.
I’m staring blankly at spools of book cloth, clipboard and pen frozen in my hands as if I’m posing for a statue. The Catatonic Paper Merchant.
“No, I’m cool.”
There’s a laugh in Carrie’s tone. “You aren’t high, are you, Robin?”
I walk over and set the board on the counter. “No, just distracted.”
“Clearly. What are you up to tonight?”
“Oh, just meeting an old friend for dinner,” I say. “I can’t figure out what to wear.”
“Are you going anywhere fancy?” she asks.
“No, just to their place.”
“Just wear what you are now,” she says. “Friends don’t care.”
I look down at my boring black pants, gray sweater, salt-bleached Chuck Taylors.
“I want to look a bit more impressive than this,” I say.
“Ohhh,” Carrie says. She’s insanely blonde, eyebrows so pale they’re translucent. One of them floats up, intrigued. “It’s not a guy, is it? Is it an ex?”
I am literally saved by the bell. The door jingles open and I lavish more attention on the browsing woman who enters than is probably good for business.
Two hours later, standing before my closet, I’m still baffled about what to wear. It’s tough because I want to look sexy, but I don’t want to make too much effort lest I hurt Jay’s feelings.
He wanders into the room. “What are you going to wear?”
“Hell if I know,” I say, tossing my hands up.
“He’s a guy. He won’t really notice.”
I pout at him. “Tell me what to wear.”
“A chastity belt,” Jay says. I study him carefully and he cracks a smile. “What about that polka-dot dress you have?”
“Don’t you think a dress is too dressy?”
“I think you should look smoking hot,” he says.
“Really?”
Jay nods and starts flipping through the hangers. “I mean, the whole point of tonight is sex, right?”
“Well, not actual sex.”
“You should look sexy,” he says and pulls out a couple dresses.
“Are you sure?”
He tosses the candidates across the bed and turns to me, puts his hands on my shoulders. “You know what I said the other night, about this turning my crank?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it still does. We’ve decided to go through with this, so if you’re going to do it, do it right. You want my Neanderthal reasoning?”
I nod.
He rubs his thumbs over my collarbone. “I want you to look insanely hot. Then, in a year or whenever, I want to invite that asshole to our wedding so he has to watch you marry me. And I want him to go nuts with jealousy, knowing what I get and he doesn’t.” Jay smiles, pure evil.
“Patrick’s not an asshole,” I remind him.
“Trust me, Robin—he’s agreed to screw around with my girlfriend. He’s an asshole.”
“You said you think he’s an okay guy.”
“He is, but he’s an asshole too.” Jay kisses my forehead. “Now get dressed and go drive that douche bag out of his mind.”
* * * * *
Jay’s enthusiasm aside, I don’t go so far as to make dinner for myself and Patrick. It didn’t feel right, using our groceries and kitchen to accessorize my infidelity, just as I wouldn’t have gone out and bought a new outfit for the occasion. Instead I drive to an upscale deli and buy some rotisserie chicken and Thanksgiving-type sides and grab a six-pack from the plaza’s liquor store. I get to Patrick’s place ten minutes early. I ring the bell, a paper bag of good-smelling food in each hand.
He opens the door and smiles. “Hey, Robin.”
“Heya.”
He lets me in and I’m glad to be inside since it’s November and I’m wearing a dress and no stockings. My Mary Janes are stiff from the cold, their leather cutting into the backs of my heels. I set the bags on his little kitchen table.
“I have beer in the car too.”
I catch Patrick blushing. “I bought wine. I didn’t know what you’d want this to be like.”
I try not to smile but I do. “This can be however we want it to be. And I’d love some wine. I’d love a lot of wine, actually. I’m a little terrified.”
While I take my coat off Patrick goes to a cabinet and pulls out a bottle, a middle-shelf Australian red with a penguin on the label.
“That’ll be nearly enough for me,” I say, pointing at it. “What are you drinking?”
He looks over his shoulder as he winds the corkscrew in. “You really that scared?”
“I’m mostly teasing. But I am pretty nervous.”
He tugs the cork out with a foomp. “Sorry if this’ll kill the mood, but how’s your man dealing with all this?” He finds two tumblers and pours us each a healthy glass, hands me one.
“Thanks.” I follow him to his living room and look around before I answer his question. He’s remarkably tidy but not quite so much that I worry about his mental health. Patrick’s got lots of bookshelves and lots of books, which surprises me for some reason. Not that he doesn’t seem smart or anything…I’ve just only ever pictured him doing manly, active tasks in his spare time, like refinishing floors or fucking the living daylights out of me.
I sit down on the couch, an old, comfy, mauve monstrosity half-hidden by a colorful afghan. Patrick goes to the hearth and assembles a fire. I know that sounds romantic but I’m almost positive that�
��s his primary heating method. He’s got a woodstove in his kitchen too. He’s such a lumbercrat.
“Well,” I finally say, watching his back as he gets the flames going. “Jay seems to be taking it pretty well, actually.”
He pulls the wire screen over the fireplace and comes to sit on the couch, a couple feet between us as a buffer. He takes a deep drink and clears his throat. “Seems to be?”
“Yeah, but like legitimately well.”
“I gotta say, I’m impressed.”
I nod. “Me too. Oh, he said we have permission to do everything but. You know, intercourse.”
“All right.”
“He’s sort of into it, now, actually,” I add, wondering immediately if I just shared too much private info about Jay. Then again, he’s sharing me. That’s pretty private.
“Into it, like…”
“Like it turns him on,” I say. “He likes that I’m over here torturing you, I guess.”
“Oh.”
I laugh and take a drink. “Like he’s got some super-amazing car he’ll let you test-drive, but only because he knows you’ll never actually own one yourself and he wants to lord it over you.”
Patrick laughs too. “Kinky.”
“How do you want to do this?”
“Tonight?” he asks. “I was figuring we’d treat it like a date. But if that’s too romantic, we don’t have to.” His gaze drops to my outfit, first-date fare if ever you saw it.
“Maybe more like friends to start out,” I say. “I know I’m sort of over-dressed. That was Jay’s idea. This is like him waxing his super-amazing car.”
Patrick smiles, looking happily puzzled. “You’re a weird couple.”
“So I’m realizing.”
“But sure, friends is fine.”
“Thanks.” I look at the clock. “In that case, can we watch channel five?”
It takes Patrick a second to realize I’m serious then he gets up and switches his late-model television on. We catch most of the first round of Jeopardy! and we drink our wine and shout answers at Alex Trebek. During the ads and the boring part where Alex talks to the contestants we go into the kitchen and dole out the food.
