The Unrequited

by Saffron A Kent

  I tense up. My heart is pounding like a jackhammer. Please, don’t let her blame me. Everyone always blames me.

  “I’m sorry, okay? It was stupid. It didn’t mean anything. He barely touched me. Just…” My voice is shrill with panic. “You have to believe me. It was nothing.”

  “Hey, Layla, of course I believe you.” Emma is the one calming me down, patting my back. “Why wouldn’t I? I know you would never do such a thing, move in on my man or whatever, so relax.”

  Her words are reassuring, but my heart is still racing as if it doesn’t understand what the fuck is happening. “You do?”

  She throws out a sad laugh. “Yeah. It’s his fault that he kissed you, his, not yours—and to throw that in my face because he thinks I am cheating on him with Matt?” She shakes her head. “It feels like I don’t even know him anymore.”

  “It was stupid, Emma. I think he was just jealous. Please don’t break up because of it.” I’m ashamed that not ten minutes ago I was floating around on a high that jealousy caused. I can’t see her like this. I can’t take any more heartbreak.

  Why can’t people just get along? my heart whines.

  Tears start flowing anew as Emma whispers, “I mean, I always knew he had a crush on you, so maybe I was stupid to get together with him in the first place.”

  “No. You weren’t stupid. There is nothing stupid about loving someone.” I grip her hands. “There has to be a way for you guys to work this out. This can’t be the end.”

  “I don’t want to.” She shrugs. “I’ve been thinking these past few days and I think maybe, it’s okay to not get what you want. Yeah, I loved him, or I thought I did, but getting together with him was not better. I thought it would be, but I think we were closer to each other as friends. We shouldn’t look for love stories where there are none to be found.”

  ________________

  I have a new shadow. Her name is Sarah Turner. She follows me everywhere.

  One day she caught me in the ladies’ room up on the second floor of the Labyrinth. I’ve always felt it’s too risky to go there, but I’m known for not heeding my own advice. I had just come out of Thomas’ office and I needed to put myself back together after he made me fall apart. She was at the sink when I entered and shot me a curious look.

  “Are you here to see Professor Abrams?”

  “Y-Yes. We, uh, I had a few questions.”

  The running water filled the silence as I averted her eyes. Then she asked, “You’re new, right? Creative writing isn’t your major?”

  “No, it’s not.” I don’t have a major yet, but she didn’t need to know that.

  Closing the tap, she rolled out a tissue and wiped her hands. “So our star poet pulled you into this?”

  Yes. “No. I have a friend who insisted I take the class.”

  “Well, good luck. I’m here if you need me for anything. As I said, I’m great at gender roles in literature.”

  She left then, and it took me a minute to understand what she meant. Suddenly, I remembered that long ago fib Thomas told outside of The Alchemy, back in a time when I barely knew him.

  Anyway, after that encounter, I see Sarah everywhere around campus. She waves at me from the corridor or smiles at me from across the street. I don’t like that. I don’t like that she sees me. In those moments, it’s hard to keep my promise to Thomas of no regrets. In those moments, I wish I could wear him on my skin so he could curb my anxiety and this heavy, dark feeling inside my chest.

  Because it doesn’t matter. No amount of accusations or looks or guilt will ever make me give this up, whatever Thomas and I have. I won’t give this up, because Thomas is happy. Well, not happy happy. He is too abandoned for that, too much in unrequited love, but he laughs without bitterness. A laugh that actually sounds like one. I thought I’d never see him laugh that way.

  But he does with me. His laughter is rich and dark, like everything else about him, and I bring that out of him.

  “Your office is so boring, Thomas. I mean, beige, really?” I told him one night when I was there, sitting on his lap.

  “What would you prefer? Purple?”

  “Duh, what else? Though I could be persuaded by blue too. You know, the color of my tattoo, the tattoo I play with when I’m alone at night.” I undulated my hips, feeling the bump of his erection between my thighs.

  “Is that right?

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Except it’s my tattoo and you’re here every night and I play with it with my tongue.” He licked the side of my neck and whispered in my ear, “Until you’re begging me to stop but secretly hoping I don’t. Is that the tattoo you’re talking about?”

  “You’re such an ass.”

  He laughed then, threw his head back and stared at the ceiling. I was stunned. I’d never seen him do that before. The sound rolled over my flesh, drenching me in fresh lust and arousal, but it was more than that. It was the fact that I’d said the same line to him countless times in the past, but he’d never laughed at it. I wasn’t saying anything new or particularly funny, but he heard it that way.

  Thomas was happy. When you’re happy, you laugh at the lamest jokes.

  How can happiness be wrong?

  How can any of this be wrong if the end result is laughter and momentary peace?

  When I’m in doubt or when I can’t fall asleep in my soft bed and have to curl up in my cold bathtub or inside my closet, I think about his laugh.

  I think about how he laughs when I climb up his body like a monkey in desperation. He laughs when I get mad at him for stealing my Twizzlers, like I steal his cigarettes. He laughs when he sees my polka dot socks. He laughs when I insist on wearing those ridiculous Russian fur hats—his words, not mine. He laughs when I tell him he’s the worst teacher anyone has ever had, that his home assignments are stupid. He laughs when he fucks me and I get too needy for my orgasm. He laughs when my words stutter while reading my poems and riding his cock.

  He laughs and laughs and laughs, and it makes me wonder, if I hadn’t pursued him with a single-minded insanity, would he have deteriorated in Hadley’s absence? Would the lines around his eyes and mouth have deepened into permanent scratches?

  So maybe all of this is a good thing—all the sneaking around, breaking rules, fucking with the universe. Everything is worth it.

  For Thomas.

  Even though it’s inadvisable, I still build castles in the air. I still think of myself as a Cinderella and him as my tarnished, broken, kinky Prince Charming.

  I just wonder what’s going to happen when the real Cinderella comes back and makes him all shiny and whole. He won’t need me then. He won’t need his slutty fake princess.

  ________________

  Bathed in the yellow light of the lamp, Thomas is sprawled in his office chair, having a smoke with his shirt unbuttoned and hair mussed up by my fingers. I’m on the floor, propped against his couch, my notebook in my lap, my eyes on the tight curves of his sweaty muscles.

  I’ve gotten used to this arrangement—being with Thomas, inside a sleepy building, in the dead of night, cozied up in his fire, writing while he smokes. Sometimes I listen to the music on his phone. It’s all instrumental, songs without words. They help me write whatever nonsense comes to my head.

  My gaze falls on his tie, lying by my side. It’s maroon in color. He never wears a tie but today was some sort of a special staff meeting and Professor Masters insisted. Not half an hour ago, I wore it around my neck with nothing else but my polka dot socks as I rode both of us to our climax. I squirm in place, probably leaving a wet patch on his coarse carpet.

  On his desk, against the wall, on the couch, on the floor—he has had me everywhere. As I look around the room, I can see our merged silhouettes on every surface. I can hear the things he whispered in my ears. I can smell the musk of our raging, borderline lunatic fucking. I can see the wrappers of Twizzlers alongside his discarded bags of chocolate croissants. I always litter and he always picks it up and puts it in
the trashcan, with an exasperated but indulgent look. Maybe I do it just so I can see that look.

  I realize that this is my home, made of my moans, my cum, and my sweat. This is more my home than my tower, than my mom’s house in New York. I don’t have to hide in here. I can be myself. Whatever fucked-up self it is, I can be that.

  Thomas is all quiet and introspective. I want to ask him what he’s thinking about, but I’m afraid to hear his answer. He’s probably thinking about her, about Hadley. He’s always thinking about her.

  It has been ten days since she went away. I know she will be back. I know she’ll come to realize how much Thomas loves her. There’s a power in him, a power in his love. It reflects in the way he fucks me. How he slakes his frustration with my body. How his body laps up my moans, my orgasms to subdue the fury in him. How he uses me to be happy.

  “I thought you were trying to quit smoking,” I say. I need his eyes on me, and that’s the first thing that comes into my head. His muscles wake up and strain as he turns the chair in my direction, and blows out a giant cloud of smoke.

  “I thought you were trying to write.” His rumbly voice tells me he was on the verge of falling asleep. I can’t help but notice that there’s something endearing about that, and so like a man. They fuck. They sleep. They fuck again.

  “I’m stuck.”

  The air changes from lazy to tightly strung. Thomas is still sprawled in the chair, giving the impression of being relaxed, but the twin flames in his gaze flicker. “Are you?”

  Nodding, I get up on my knees, my notebook falling to the ground with a thud. My back arches—a default reaction now—when he looks me up and down. My winter gear along with my undergarments are lying somewhere in a heap, leaving me in a thin, see-through sweater and a wool skirt. My nipples pout, much like my lips.

  “So are you gonna help me?” I ask in my tiny voice, the voice that never fails to get a reaction from him.

  Last time I asked him to help me with my poem, he told me to sit on his cock and read it out loud while riding him. All the while, he sat there like a king, never moving, simply watching me with a hunger that drove me to jump on him, up and down.

  I come to my hands and knees and crawl toward him, watching him through my lashes. Cigarette clenched between his lips, he follows my every move with hooded eyes. Every flutter of my loose hair around my face. Every little sway of my dangling breasts that are barely hidden by my top. I reach him and he shifts his chair to face me. My hands grip his calves through his jeans, massaging the muscles as I sit up on my haunches.

  “So?” I crane my neck up and hug his leg between my breasts, moaning out loud at the delicious friction of his pants.

  He whips the finished cigarette out of his mouth and it lands in the trashcan. Leaning down, he breathes the smoke over my mouth. I suck it in like I’ll never breathe again. Oh God. God. I can’t take it. This hormonal, chemical explosion inside my body—it’s too much.

  Then his hands band over my biceps and he hauls me up and makes me straddle his lap. The chair creaks with both our weights. My hands caress his stubble as I murmur, “That sound is going to kill me.”

  “What sound?”

  “Your stupid chair.” And there it is, his laughter. It makes every corner of my body smile. “Whenever I hear it, all I think about is you fucking me in it so it’s screaming with our weight.”

  A side of his mouth tips up in the wake of his short laugh. “I’m kind of getting the feeling you want me for my body rather than my poetic genius.”

  Genius—yup, he is that. I don’t know how, but words come to him out of thin air. He looks at the ceiling and describes it in ways I never even thought of. Despite our frenzied fucking, he does teach me things. He calls me out on my poor word choice, tears me apart over overly flowery language, and I think he likes it. Other than sex, that is the one time he’s animated, his eyes dripping with another kind of passion. He glows when he talks about poetry.

  Coming back to the moment, I say, “Actually, I also want you to bump my grades up.” I move against him, my bare pussy sliding along the hard bulge, barely hidden by his unzipped jeans. “Because, you see, I’m not very good at writing. My work is choppy, and my word choice sucks.” His eyes smolder and his hands come to grab my undulating hips.

  “Is this your way of getting a compliment out of me?”

  “Yes,” I admit shamelessly. “Give me a compliment. I challenge you.”

  He digs the pads of his fingers into my hips to stop me from moving. “Fine. You don’t irritate me as much as you did before.”

  “Wow, stop, I’m blushing.” I swat at his naked chest. “You’re so good with words.”

  He swats at my ass in retaliation, making me moan. “I told you I’m not very good at talking. You want compliments, you should hang out with your friends instead of being with me.”

  It’s a joke, I know, a dry, sarcastic comment. I should forget about it. I shouldn’t ruin the moment—I’m on borrowed time as it is.

  But my stubborn heart isn’t in the mood. It’s remembering his words from the other night when I was in his unpacked study. I found my dad’s journals, his poems, and I knew…that this was the way for me to talk.

  Perhaps he notices how rigid I’ve become in his hold, because he tenses too. After my last attempt at talking about it in his car, I haven’t broached the subject of his lack of writing.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, frowning.

  “Nothing.” I smile and massage his shoulders, trying to do what I do best—distract him.

  “Layla,” he warns with that voice of his. It’s not fair. I can never resist that voice. Never.

  I simultaneously sag and tense in his hold. “I…I want to see you write. Something. Anything. I just want you to write.”

  A beat passes. Then two. The urgency in my chest is increasing. I don’t want the silence. Silence is ruining. “I can’t see you like this. Thomas, I know. It’s obvious. You—”

  He doesn’t let me finish as he lifts me up and puts me on the desk, my legs dangling. I try to sit up but he presses his palm on my breastbone, keeping me still. He stands over me, some kind of god of wrath with his thunderous frown and sparkling skin. My chest rises and falls under his palm, like he’s the one making me breathe. If he removes his hand, I’ll die.

  “Take off your top.”

  What? No.

  “Thomas—”

  “Take it off.” He licks his upper lip.

  Shivering, I obey his order. My tits come into view and he breathes deeply. “Lift your skirt up to your waist.”

  I do that too, squirming, revealing my naked pussy and my tattoo. This time his breath splinters as he takes it in. He circles my tattoo with his knuckles, jerking the flesh of my stomach. With both his hands, he spreads my thighs, his thumb rubbing my soft skin, grazing my pussy lips and the fragile flesh around it. I move restlessly, bucking my hips at his touch, making my heavy tits jiggle.

  Thomas is aroused by the sight. He loves seeing my breasts shake, so I do it over and over, bucking, writhing, stoking his lust. It’s turning me on too, even though a part of me weeps at this. I want him to talk to me. I don’t want to be a distraction or a fake Cinderella. I want to be the real deal. It scares me so much that I forget to breathe.

  It’s not the first time I’m thinking this, and I don’t know how to stop.

  The air comes rushing back when Thomas retrieves a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He takes one out, pops it in his mouth, and lights it up.

  His nostrils flare and my mouth dries out when his entire hand grabs my pussy and squeezes. It’s such a vulgar gesture, vulgar and owning and possessive and…erotic.

  With his other hand, he takes the cigarette out of his mouth and sends the smoke spiraling up. His hand on my pussy moves, and I almost shriek when he inserts two fingers inside and curls them up.

  I reach my arms out to hold on to a part of him but he shakes his head. “Grab the edge of the desk.”
/>   Swallowing, I do, and I watch him take another drag while playing with my core. He bends at the waist and hovers over my breasts, his cheeks hollowed out, the cigarette stuck between his lips.

  “Th-Thomas?” I’m scared. The burning end of the stick is too close to my body. It looms over my left breast, my heart. Is he…Is he going to mark me with it?

  He lifts his eyes at me, holds the stare. Something shifts in them, something dangerous, and I struggle beneath him, afraid. Then he takes the cigarette out and blows hot smoke over my tits before he latches on to my nipple and sucks. My hips buck, lodging his fingers deeper.

  Moaning, I open my legs wider. My dangling feet come up on the desk, my heels digging into the edge.

  “You were saying…” he rumbles over my quivering flesh, sending a frenzy of arousal everywhere in my body.

  “What?” Tilting my head, I ask the dark-haired head currently bent over my breasts.

  Thomas pinches my clit as he looks up, an arrogant brow arched. “You were saying something that you know, about something that’s obvious.”

  My head falls back down, defeated, maybe even in anger. I don’t want to be his fuck doll anymore.

  Thomas notices the tightness in my body and blows another mouthful of smoke on my other breast, before plumping it up and sucking on the nipple. Despite myself, my pussy shoots out thick strands of arousal.

  “You’re so fucking wet, Layla.” Thomas groans into my skin. “You’re always so smooth and wet and hot. I like to think you keep it that way for me. You keep your pussy warm for me, don’t you? You sleep with your hand tucked between your legs, cupping your cunt so it stays warm and toasty for when I fuck it.”

  My legs come around his back as I writhe beneath him, loving this, hating myself, hating him for doing this to me. “I’ve seen you in class, Thomas. I’ve seen you…looking at them wh-when they talk about writing. I have seen how you talk about writing and art and how talented you are. I’ve seen the longing on your face. You want what they have and it-it breaks my heart,” I whisper, tears rolling down my cheeks. “I want you to write so you can talk. You have to talk, Thomas. No one can live like this.”