by Hawke, Jessa
Alex Floravsky lived in a surprisingly old-fashioned building; what was surprising about it was not so much its age, but how much it reminded Clara of the apartment building she herself had grown up in. It made Alex somehow normal, a regular schmo just like the rest of them, and this appealed greatly to Clara, for it was what she suspected about him all along. She rang his number, and several minutes later, when he still had not appeared downstairs like he said he would, Clara sat down on the rickety steps in the lobby to wait. He appeared in a simple black T-shirt and dark cargo shorts, stubble peppering his face several shades darker than the rest of him. She smiled when she saw him, and together, they climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. He led her through the narrow front hallway of the apartment where a gleaming green bike hung high above their heads on a special rack.
“You ride?” Clara asked, taking off her shoes.
“Love it,” answered Alex briefly, tossing his keys onto a small shelf and nodding to someone in the living room.
She peeked in, surprised at all the rugs that were hanging on the walls and covering the floor. How very true to his roots, she thought appreciatively, and then her gaze landed on the guy sitting on the couch.
Oh my.
Lankier even than Tulip himself, the boy had a side haircut that bared one part of his skull in a buzz. His tattoos climbed up both arms, terminating at his knuckles bilaterally; they spread over his neck delicately, as if they were a mere suggestion, and his fantastically blue eyes opened at the intrusion upon his solitude.
“Hey man,” Tulip called out to him as he threaded though the room. “This is Clara. Clara, this is my roommate, Nick.”
“’sup,” said Nick, uncurling his fingers from a seemingly-empty Redbull can and placing it on the table in front of him. For two tattoo artists, they had quite the homey apartment, complete with three kittens play-fighting on the rug in front of them. They batted around a little toy mouse in a way people only find appealing in small animals, for if they were larger, it would scare them shitless.
Clara found herself drinking Nick in. He was the quintessential bad boy, that was what she thought. What about him was bad in the traditional sense of the word, Clara could not say, but there was an air of danger about him, an openness that seemed to define convention. With his feet propped up on the correct coffee table in front of him and the way he scooped up the kittens with one hand seemed to be telling the world, even when the world wasn’t watching: Fuck you, your standards, and your rules. I’ve got this down, and I refuse to be anyone I am truly not.
All in all, quite the forward way to live. Could she say that she herself would be able to adopt such a lifestyle? Clara had to chuckle at the speed at which her brain processed all those thoughts; it took no longer than the exact amount of time it took to cross that living room, and the second set of thoughts as Nick’s eyes travelled up and down her body in what Clara assumed was an appreciative manner, was whether it was the stability and good girl image she was sure emanated from her that appealed to him.
Tulip’s room was at once organized and wonderfully chaotic. A brand-new laptop screen featured prominently on the desk in the center of the room, which made sense, considering it was where he created the artwork that had drawn her to him in the end. The rest of it was filled with subjects that served as his muse: a skull bought online that would assist in drawing head shapes, a bright red scarf whose color would tantalize the imagination. The kittens padded into the room, light on their feet and a pleasure to the eye. Tulip’s works hung on the walls, mounted on plain canvas, adding the ultimate personal touch; Clara did not see the line drawings she had liked, but neither did she see the nudes. Tulip had set up a chair for her catty-corner away from the laptop and drawing board, and she was pleased to see that not only was the entire room clean, but he had also evidently changed the sheets.
Still lingering from the heated look with Nick, Clara took in the soft plaid comforter and large, overstuffed pillows. The bed was parallel to the window of the room, and quite suddenly, the image of laying there in nothing but an oversized T-shirt and socks, bathing in the golden light of the afternoon came over her; she chuckled quietly to herself as she wondered if perhaps the reason she felt like Alex was a kindred spirit was because she was part cat herself.
She slipped her bag to the floor as Tulip went into the kitchen to pour himself some tea. Settling into the chair, she relaxed her body and tried to find a comfortable position in the chair; she finally decided on a reposed look with her legs thrown over the leg of the chair, which caused some immediate concerns about the pressure points on her body. She shook her waterfall of light brown hair down her back and told herself she gave no damns. She would be like the models of yore who were celebrated by their abilities to hold positions for long periods of time without moving a single inch. As Tulip re-entered the room, sipping honey-sweetened jasmine tea, she straightened out a little, determined to be the model worthy of his genius.
He readied his computer and asked her if she would like anything in particular to distract her while he worked. She settled on a comedy routine, mostly because she wanted to gauge his reactions to it, see if his sense of humor was just as expansive as she had always imagined it to be. He settled her into position, with just a few cues as to how to tilt her head and hold her neck. He said he wanted to see her face; she wanted to be in a position where she could observe the lean workings of the muscles in his abdomen and the long, almost spider-like digits of his hands. She loved hands, especially the hands of people who work almost exclusively with them. Clara thought she could understand nearly everything about a person from their hands; since Tulip worked mainly with computers to create his art, he did not have ink or paint-stained fingers, and as he navigated the mouse, she wondered what it would be like to have her body dealt with as deftly as his tools.
The comedian quickly brought many smiles to her face, which did not seem to bother Tulip as he sketched out her body. She felt his eyes travel over her, acutely aware of what he was looking at in each moment he looked at her. He drank in her shoulders, her thighs, and the flesh on her arms felt wonderfully creamy and smooth underneath his gaze. The faintest blush settled on his cheeks as he drew her breasts, and she could tell he was trying to find that balance between staring too much and not being able to do them justice. Moreover, he wanted to look. It was in that moment that she realized something.
“It’s a lot easier to draw the figures from the photos, isn’t it?”
A faint, embarrassed smile touched his lips, and he did not meet her eye. She would have never pegged him for being shy about this, but maybe there was a Madonna-whore complex in his head that he associated with her being a quintessential good girl. Well, she wanted to remedy that. As she watched him begin to react to what the comedian was saying, she started to engage him in the jokes, to build it up. She asked about his favorite music, the movies he liked to watch; she wanted to know it all. A friendly, easy rapport began to build between them, especially when they delved into their shared culture. They were the era of living with their grandparents as children, the generation that straddled the border between digital and old school, and there was a lightness to the gravity of the things they were discussing that comes only from shared experience.
“Did your parents beat the shit out of you whenever you got less than a 90 on a test?” she asked him, and he chuckled appreciatively and said that yes indeed, they did.
“They were so taken aback by the fact that I wanted to be an artist that they said I had to do it out of their house or not at all.”
“And so you moved, huh?” Alex nodded, his eyes still alternating between her and the screen. “And now look at you. You make a living off of it, and on top of that, you’re actually being sought out for commissions and getting paid. That’s a lot to be proud of,” Clara said, her voice filled with earnestness.
They moved into deeper territory, romantic relationships, and before long, they had found out that someone she had
dated a while ago was actually his childhood nemesis from camp. They laughed uproariously at these stories, and Clara had the acute sensation of wanting to climb into his lap. Had she not been the model, she would have wanted to stand right by him and put her hand over his hand as he drew her, to hear him talk about lines and shadow for hours, if only to gain a small window of access to his mind.
“So you’ve had relationships with guys and girls, huh?” she asked him, titillated by this piece of information. Alex just nodded, and that was as simple as that.
It was perhaps an hour before Tulip had finished sketching and drawing out her body and hair, and then it became much more difficult to hold a conversation. She felt him eye her nose, her mouth, and he asked her not to move. What did he think of her lips? Was he imagining something in between them? Clara felt their corners lift as that though brushed across the surface of her consciousness, and she supposed that there was something in Alex that reacted to whatever sign her body had just given, because as he looked at her eyes, into her eyes and moved his hand, there came into the air something nearly tangible between them, something that almost drew her up out of her chair and close to his broadly defined shoulders, where she could touch him.
She sat for so long, spellbound, that she almost didn’t want to give in to the little signals that her back was sending her that she had sat in one position for far too long. She wasn’t seventeen anymore, and with a roughly muttered apology, she moved reluctantly off the chair and bent over to stretch out her back.
“We can take a break,” Alex said, not stopping the motion of his fingers around the stylus he had switched to. Clara wondered if he was drawing from memory now that she had switched positions. She got up and pulled her arms away from her, but it was not enough. Without asking for his permission, she went into child’s pose on his bed, feeling her bottom rock back out on her heels, her arms in a suppliant position, outstretched and faintly beseeching. She stayed like that for a long, long time, all the way until she felt the weight of the bed shift as Alex Floravsky joined her on the bed.
“You wrote for the school paper when we were in high school,” he told her, and she nodded, pleased that he had noticed her at all. “You did that piece on how creativity is schooled out of us.”
“You remember that?” she asked, incredulous.
He looked thoughtful, but when his dark, inscrutable eyes met hers, she could feel his sincerity. “I thought it was a great piece; it resonated wholly and totally with me. For the longest time, I felt the artistic urge suppressed in me; I was weighed down by all the conventional expectations, and your article made me feel understood.”
Clara could feel her heart pounding. Their bodies leaned in towards each other now, their knees gently touched.
“I never thought you noticed me at all,” she told him, heart gently hammering. “I looked at your eyeliner and combat boots and thought, ‘There’s no way in hell I’m badass enough for this guy.’”
“You are more than badass enough,” said Alex Floravsky, and closed his mouth around hers.
His lips were warm and soft, smooth and lovely, but before she had time to dwell on this, Alex had scooped her chin in his hands and tilted her face so that their mouths could fit together better. She felt her hands come up and close around his shoulders, the rounded muscles there smooth and steady underneath her palms. He grasped her by the upper arms, and she felt herself sink into a Scarlett O’Hara like pose, lovely in the helplessness in his arms.
It was heady. Her arms snaked up and twined around his neck, and he drew her closer first, flicking his tongue warm and steady against hers, nipping at her lower lip to bring about an exquisite mixture of pleasure and pain. She felt him lean the length of his body against her, felt her soft breasts crush against the firm pressure of his chest, and he lowered her down on the plaid comforter slowly. He covered her with his weight and she received him the way a mother cat receives the salacious pressure of her kittens; she could feel him enjoying her and wound her hands into his jet-black hair, softer than anything she might have ever imagined it could be. The blunt edges of it tantalized her palms, and then she felt a pull within her mouth. He drew her tongue out, sucked on it the way she imagined he wanted to be sucked on, and Clara found herself wrapping her legs around his waist, ankles knocking together over his buttocks.
Alex’s breath came in more rushed as his fingers climbed up her torso. She felt him sink into her softness, felt him close his hand around her left breast as he kissed her, felt him knead it, gently at first, and then with a hungry roughness that drew a ragged little surprised gasp from her throat. She felt him smile against her face and draw his face down to her neck even while his hands reached for the buttons on her dress. There was no fumbling here; he undid each button from its loop as his tongue drew lazy circles around the sensitive skin of her neck and collarbone. She felt him roll his tongue against her, sending sharp jolts of electricity straight to her groin, and then he began to press the weight of his erection—had she caused that?—against the softest part of her yet, a suggestion, an invitation, a question.
Her breasts were rounded against the neckline of the dress, and as the buttons came undone, the creamy curves were bared to them both. She wore a black lace bra underneath, and as he opened her up like a present, he kissed his way down the inviting mounds, pausing to nibble at the little pink nipples that he could see against the fabric. Clara heard someone moaning and realized it was herself; the picture painted itself invitingly in her mind, and it only spurred her on. There she was, pale against the blue dress, her cleavage rounded and soft, Alex Floravsky peeling away the black lace to enclose her fully in his mouth, tonguing her, scooping her breasts and sucking away for all he was worth.
It drove her to such near madness that she did not even hear the door to the bedroom open. It took her a few seconds to become aware of the fact that Nick had loped into the room; she watched in half-shock as he settled comfortably on the edge of the bed and ran his hand against Alex’s behind.
It was that way between them, then, she thought as Alex took Nick by the collar of his shirt and drew him down on the bed beside her. The way they kissed each other, tumbling inside each other’s mouths, made it clear that they had done this many times before. Their hands fumbled between their bodies to grab at each other through their pants, palms pressing down flat and firmly to create just the right kind of pressure. They paused so that Nick could curl up on his side beside Clara. She found that she could not say a word as he began to lick the delicate inner whorl of her ear, grabbing her earlobe between his lips and sucking it in a way that only made her want more. When his tongue finally climbed inside, to the part of her that had the finest of raised hairs and the warm wetness of instrument of choice made contact, she heard the most incredible sound. She lay against Nick and under Alex, mewling like a cat in heat, and she could not stop her body from bucking against the two handsome boys, both of who looked quite well pleased with themselves at lowering her inhibitions.
Lord, but what a fascinating way this was to live! Clara felt herself being shared and melded into the moment. Was this a consequence of being free-spirited, accepting whatever opportunities came your way? She could not imagine doing this with any of her friends, and she knew that few of them would believe that she actually managed to indulge in such a delicious fantasy. Clara suddenly felt herself rise up out of the old, and she knew that she wanted to be bad. Because as Alex Floravsky slid her dress down her hips and thighs and tossed it onto the floor, it suddenly didn’t feel bad to be bad. She had never felt so desired, so appreciated for her feminine beauty; most people commented on her stability and practicality while completely ignoring the fact that everyone has a wild side. And what partners to share it with! She could see Nick’s illustrated arms traveling over her own unmarked skin, and it was almost the jolt she got from chiaroscuro, light against dark. Because it was light and dark in their souls, all their edges sharply defined, but when mixed together, fantastically
beautiful.
She felt Alex pulling her up and drawing her back to his mouth. While they fondled her breasts with their hands, the two guys kissed each other, the licking of their tongues sloppy and playful, the sucking noises funny and sexy. Clara felt her nipples pucker against their gentle teasing and felt the upward tilt of her hips, begging for something, something that she had a wicked little name for.
The rearranged so that she was cradled in Alex’s lap. He felt strong and stable underneath her back, and in the warm enclose of his legs, Clara felt completely safe, completely secure. He teased her neck again, and his hands traveled over to her front to first tweak her nipples, and then slid lower and lower down until he had finagled his hands into the damp softness of her pussy, rubbing one long finger in between the lips there even as Nick approached her, moving a hand up and down on his cock. She closed her eyes to drink in the delightful sensations that were coming from the blood rushing to her nether regions and felt the hot press of flesh against her lips. She knew it was Nick rubbing his penis along her mouth and she opened her mouth softly to feel the length of his shaft more firmly.
She opened her mouth and took Nick in even as Alex spread her with his fingers to find her clit, hidden, but swollen. As Nick slid inside of her throat, she gagged a little, which only seemed to spur him on, and she ran her tongue along the underside of him even as Alex’s fingers slipped inside the warm wetness of her, teasing her, making her want more, to be filled completely. As she glanced up at Nick, he met her eyes and through the haze of lust, she saw a wicked grin split his face and saw the naughty glint in his eyes.
“I like the way you look right now,” he said, just as Alex’s rubbing brought her to a gasping finish and the tremors of her orgasm sucked his fingers inside of her.
They played for what seemed like hours. Eventually, they ended up on the chair on which Alex had drawn Clara, removing the arms, and enjoying some togetherness between the three of them. The guys had pushed up inside of her, Alex in the front entry and Nick in the rear, enjoying the feel of each other through her body. She had never been more full, never felt quite so comfortable in her own nudity, but when Alex buried his face in her breasts and muffled his groans of pleasure against her, Clara felt powerful. Later, when Nick exploded his juices in her mouth and Alex decorated her nipples with his, Clara knew that the painting of the day had gone far more differently than she had expected, but exactly as she had hoped.
