Total Exposure

by Huss, JA

  She sighs. Loudly. Then says, “My story is a poem. It takes time to compose.”

  “I never told you to write a poem, Evangeline. A few scribbled words will suffice.”

  She just scowls at me. I can’t tell if that comment makes her angry… or sad.

  “Go compose it then,” I say. “Leave it on the counter when you’re done and then go upstairs and wait for me.”

  “Will you come up?” she asks.

  I wonder if Augustine called Jordan when she and Alexander separated? I wonder if they got back together for those few months? I wonder if they talked about me?

  “Why are you ignoring me?” Evangeline asks.

  It’s such an honest question. And the desperate tone in her voice mirrors my own feelings at the moment. So I say, “I’m just admiring you,” and it’s a lie, of course. Because I’m stuck in the past, just like she is.

  But it’s also sort of true. Because she is very beautiful. Especially when she’s emotional. It’s a tragic kind of beautiful. The kind that makes people look twice. The kind you see in perfume ads, or on a fashion runway with the too-skinny girls, dressed up as someone else, walking with hidden purpose that’s really nothing but obvious anguish.

  Dark. And hopeless. And emotional.

  My answer soothes her to the point of softening. She looks at our book in her hands. She’s sitting Indian-style on the couch, long, dark hair hanging to cover her pretty face.

  And it makes me sad that lies… can be so soothing.

  Makes me feel guilty too. Because it’s way too easy to soothe people. You just say what they want to hear and they believe you.

  Trust you.

  It works on men too. I know. I’ve been that man.

  But I was the glue, I remind myself. That part wasn’t a lie.

  And I’m the glue now too. I’m the only thing holding Evangeline Rolaine together at this point.

  It occurs to me that this is a very serious role and I’m neglecting my duties. Neglecting her in favor of a past mistake. Forgetting why I’m really here. Not here, according to Jordan or her doctor. But here according to me.

  I don’t want to hurt her. I just… don’t think I can help it.

  “Write your poem,” I say into the intercom. “And then go upstairs and put on the blindfold.”

  She looks up at the camera I had to rig up after her last tantrum, her expression one of total and utter confusion. Kinda like mine if I could see it.

  “What?” she asks in a soft voice. But there’s a hint of disbelief in her question. Like it’s exactly what she wanted to hear next, but she can’t believe she heard it.

  “Do it.” I whisper now. Let most of my words be muffled by the static and crackling of the intercom.

  She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders like she needs the courage, and begins to write.

  That’s when her phone, sitting on the desk in front of my computer monitors since she left it on that hallway table the second day she was here, beeps an incoming alert.

  I pick it up, unable to read the message, but I think it’s a voicemail. There are two icons with enough uncracked screen to press them, and neither are for the phone. But I press one until it starts to wiggle and rearrange the icons until the phone is in the right spot. Then I press it and play the message.

  I listen to it three times, then call the number he left, plotting a new twist to the story we’re telling.

  Evangeline sits there agonizing over her words for hours. Hours.

  So long, the arrangements I start making get made.

  So long I run out of memories of Augustine to dwell on.

  So long I get hungry and make a peanut butter sandwich and snap still images of her and then retouch them like I would back in school when I cared about how the fucking pictures turned out.

  So long, I’m just about to scream that nobody gives two fucks about her stupid poem and to just get her ass upstairs so I can come up and fuck her.

  But then she says, “OK,” and stands up, walks to the kitchen, and leaves the book on the counter. She turns, but her hand remains on the cover. Which is just your run-of-the-mill notebook cover. No picture or anything. Just plain black.

  And then she turns back. Like she might want to rip those words out of that book and stuff them down the garbage disposal so I never get to see what she wrote.

  I’m just about to say something when she draws in a deep breath, turns, and walks away.

  I don’t bother following her steps up the stairs on camera. Or along the hallway to the second set of stairs. Or up to the bedroom. I don’t even watch her take off her clothes, even though I never told her to do that, and slip the tie around her eyes like an obedient child.

  I’m too busy thinking about the words in that book. Words she wrote but didn’t want to write.

  I just look up a few minutes later and there she is.

  Lying on the bed naked. Her fingers between her legs. Her mouth slightly open as she rubs her clit. Her perfect breasts rising and falling with the fast beating of her heart.

  She waits for me.

  I make her wait.

  I watch, forgetting about the past for once. Putting Augustine and Jordan behind me for a while.

  And just be… present as I go upstairs, get her book, sit on the couch where she just was, and open it to the last page.

  Did you ever feel forsaken?

  Just a lifetime of waste

  as people say they must’ve been mistaken?

  Autonomous child now blasphemously wild

  alone, and lost, and afraid of being broken?

  Well, I have.

  That was me.

  Tired of all the publicity.

  Choppy waves of tattered lace

  and only shadows on the stage.

  So I withdrew and stayed alone

  withdrawing further from my throne

  of greed and hunger

  and all the ways they threw me under

  until there was nothing left

  but the fractured lights of night

  and the disillusionment of wonder.

  I have been forsaken.

  That’s why I’m here.

  I think I stare at that poem for eternity. Several eternities. I read it nine hundred and twenty-three times. Or a dozen, at least. I scrutinize every word she chose for me. Every secret she just revealed.

  And now I’m her. I hold the book up to the camera lens she is most definitely not looking through, and ask myself, who is not on the other side, “Where’s the rest of it?”

  I need the rest of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - Evangeline

  There are emotions flowing through me that I can’t describe. There are no words for them. It’s fear but longing. It’s excitement, but sadness. It’s desire, but anguish.

  It’s crazy. That’s all I know for certain.

  I am not a part of the real world. I am not here, or there. I am not living, or dead. I am something in between.

  It scares me.

  But I don’t care.

  It feels like hours later when I finally hear the creaking of the stairs under his heavy footsteps.

  I stop breathing.

  My hand stops playing with the sensitive skin between my legs. The wetness is already there, primed for him. Please, God. Make him touch me.

  The door opens with a soft rush of air. The room fills up with his presence. Even though I have the blindfold on and I can’t see anything, I feel him from across the room.

  “Please,” actually comes out of my mouth. Begging. I’m begging for his attention.

  And then he’s there, sitting on the bed next to me. His fingertips pinching my nipple. The heat of his body against the coolness of mine. I shiver, sending a chill up my spine, making the nipple he’s still playing with bunch and peak and turn into a hard rock under his touch.

  His hand rests on the inner flesh of my thigh and gently urges me to open my legs. I suck in air, and hold it again, because he makes me for
get how to breathe out.

  My body is squirming, still begging for more. I want him to cover me. Put his whole chest over my beating heart and cover me up. Make me melt into him and not be alone anymore.

  But he does something better. He slips his hand up and down my inner thigh, lightly brushing my skin, and with each sweep, he takes it just half an inch further. Further down, until he’s rubbing the inside of my knee. Further up until his knuckles bump against my clit.

  I writhe with anticipation. Buck my back with expectations. I reach for his face, find a scratchy jawline, hold him like that. Imagining his face in my mind. My finger finds his mouth and his lips part. He sucks on me, his tongue caressing the tip of my finger, his teeth nipping at it, and I die. I swear to God, I die.

  Then he holds my hand, withdraws the finger from his mouth, and places my palm on my own stomach. He slides it down, until it’s back between my legs. But he holds it there, and when I begin to rub myself, he slaps my tit so hard, I gasp.

  “No,” he whispers.

  And I want to scream, Tell me what you want! Tell me what to do!

  And that scares me, because I never like being told what to do. Not since—

  But he’s leaning down now, his warm breath sweeping across my nipple as he takes it into his mouth and sucks. And bites. And I might lose myself in this moment.

  I might just float into nothingness and be no one. Ever again.

  Except… his mouth travels downward, his tongue gently licking the skin of my belly, until his face is buried between my legs, his scratchy jaw rubbing against the soft, tender skin of my upper thighs, and just the slightest movement of his breath near my pussy is enough to make me gasp.

  A finger slips inside me just as his tongue licks my clit.

  I might lose it. I might just come—

  Two fingers inside me. Stretching me open as his face dips down, deeper, lower, until his tongue penetrates me the way I wish his cock would.

  I can’t control myself. I can’t. I just moan, and whimper, and grab his hair, which feels soft and clean, and I want to take the blindfold off to see what color it is, but then I don’t. Because I like not seeing him. I like not knowing what will come next. I like all this uncertainty. And I think… I think I like him too.

  I never want him to leave me. I want him to slip into this bed and stay with me and we can—

  He stands up and all the sensations stop.

  I panic, nearly hyperventilating.

  But then I hear the jingle of his belt, and the swoosh of a shirt going over a head, and the kicking off of boots that thud on the hardwood floors. And then his warm, naked body covers me. Just the way I wanted it to. And I hold his face in my hands as he kisses me. Deeply, and lovingly, and with longing that you don’t expect from a stranger.

  But he’s not a stranger anymore. He’s my stranger. He’s my watcher. He’s… mine.

  So I say that. I say, “You’re mine.”

  And he laughs, but it’s not a laugh. It’s an agreement. Or maybe a disagreement, because he’s not mine, I’m his. And he knows this.

  His knees kick mine open wide, and I hold them like that. Spread wide for him as he positions his body in place. His hard cock finds its way home to the opening of my pussy.

  And I’m so wet, but when he forces the wide girth of his cock inside me, it hurts. But oh, God, does it hurt in all the right ways.

  My legs wrap around him, squeezing him to me, and I wonder… what kind of a sick person must I be to let a stranger fuck me like this?

  And I think he’s thinking the same thing.

  But neither of us stop.

  We just need to be held, and caressed, and yes, fucked. And I don’t know how I know he needs it as much as I do, but I know. He’s lost too. He lost himself, like I lost me. Or something, the way I lost my childhood. Or someone, the way I lost my family.

  So I say, “I’ll be that,” to him. And I don’t exactly feel him stiffen, and I definitely don’t hear him agree.

  But we agree. I know we do.

  As soon as that thought enters my head, he pushes himself deeper inside me. And even though I’m blindfolded underneath this man’s tie, I close my eyes anyway. Because it just feels too good to keep them open.

  He goes slow after that. We both do, because we’re in this together now. Fully invested in the watched-watcher dynamic. Fully committed to whatever this is. Sick fantasy, or inevitable solution, it doesn’t matter because it’s ours.

  So I just enjoy it. And I think he enjoys it too. Because he begins to moan a little, just a little, just like me. And he starts kissing my neck, the way I’m hungrily teasing the skin of his bare shoulder with my mouth.

  His hands slip under my ass and squeeze as he flips us over so I’m on top.

  I don’t even know how to process that change of position.

  It stills me for a moment. And I sit on his hips, straddling him. The heaviness of my breasts eased by the grip of his hands. His cock still inside me as my hips begin to move a little. My hands pressing on his hard, muscular chest.

  And the urge to lift my blindfold and look at him is almost overwhelming. My hand actually flies up to my face—

  But his hand is there to catch it. Like it was meant to be there all along. And he says, “Shhh,” and lowers it back to his chest.

  So I give in. And go with it. And let him lead from below.

  His hips begin thrusting upward, taking me for a ride as his cock slips in and out of me as I rise and fall with the motion of us. Then his hand is gripping my ass again, and for a second, I think he’s gonna flip me over again, and even though it never happens, I mourn the imaginary loss of my top position. Until his finger slips into my asshole and—

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  It feels so good. Like, too good to be happening.

  He pushes against the tight muscles that prevent his entry, making me gasp, making me whine with pain. But then a second later his finger is inside my ass, and his cock is inside my pussy, and I feel him from both sides.

  I come.

  I can’t help it. I just let go, and there’s a wailing, pleasure-filled scream coming from my mouth as he fucks me harder from underneath. I coat his cock with my slick release, making it easier to thrust himself up inside me.

  I respond in a way I didn’t think possible. Didn’t think I knew how. But I fuck him back with abandon. Because there are so many more things I want to do with him tonight. I want to suck his cock. I want it so far down my throat, I choke on it. I want to lick his balls, and grab him with my fist, and pump him up and down. I want to sit on his face and rub my pussy all over his chin. I want his hands around my throat, holding me from behind, forcing me to be still. To be owned. To be his as he takes whatever he wants.

  “I want all of it.”

  He laughs, still pounding me. It’s a small, gruff, deep-throated laugh that sends a chill of pleasure through my body as my pussy slides up and down his shaft. He wraps his strong arms around me, pulls me down into his chest, and holds me there. Tightly. For just a moment.

  And then he throws me off, scrambles around, and holds my face in the tight grip of his thumb and forefinger until I open for him and taste his hot, salty come shooting across my tongue.

  He groans and I want to come again just from the sound of him.

  Dear God, he makes me feel like an animal.

  He collapses off to the side, breathing hard, but smiling. I can just tell he’s smiling so I smile too.

  “I want to see you,” I say.

  He says nothing. Just leans over, kisses me, not even caring that his come is all over my face, and whispers, “That would ruin everything.”

  A moment later he’s up off the bed. And even though I want him to stay, I think he’s right. I think… there are so many ways to ruin this and only one way to make it right.

  With the blindfold.

  So I let him go. I don’t take off my blindfold. I don’t even get up to wash my face. I want his claim
on me all night.

  Chapter Thirty - Ixion

  It’s a peculiar thing to feel reluctance about a woman I’m involved with. I mean, typically I don’t feel anything at all.

  Not true. I feel satisfaction in the moment of climax.

  But I feel a reluctance to leave Evangeline after we’re done.

  I do leave her. Feeling things and doing things don’t always coincide in my mind. So I do leave her.

  But I don’t want to.

  And then, when I get back down in the basement, I have a strange premonition that I’m taking this too far. That what I’m doing is crossing a line. Hers, for sure. But his too. And if I go through with this, it’s an ending of sorts. With her, for sure again. And him too.

  Not that we didn’t already end things. That happened a long time ago. But he moved on and I sorta… didn’t. I sorta stayed behind. Sorta… dwelled. And let it all fester and build into an anger I had no idea I was holding inside me until I saw his face when he came to bail me out of jail.

  And now I’m pissed. And I’m sorry, too. Sorry that Evangeline is a part of this. Sorry that I’m playing his game with her. Sorry if she gets hurt. And then I wonder…

  Maybe there’s another way to get what I want?

  So I stay up for a while looking for information. Watching the footage. Reading her story, her poem, and her Wikipedia page, over and over again.

  Wanting more because I know the answer is out there.

  I mean… can she really hate me if I fix her in the end?

  Why do I care if she hates me?

  I dunno. I do. So I sit down to write, and even though it takes a lot longer to get it right this time, I put in the effort. Her poem is like a challenge. A way to turn her past into art. Or something like that.

  By the time I’m done, it’s nearly six AM and I never went to sleep. I tell myself, no big deal. I’ve stayed up days at a time before.

  But I lose the battle as soon as I get back into bed after putting the book on the counter for her.