The Other Half

by Jess Whitecroft

  Jody cries out and arches his back to meet me. “Oh God, yes. Keep talking. I’m so hot for it.”

  I bend over him, panting. His foot is on my shoulder and his flexibility is a fresh, unexpected thrill. “I’m going to fuck you in every single room of our house. Even the ones that don’t have floors yet.”

  He laughs and I feel it vibrate all the way through him, and I laugh, too, surprised and delighted by the thought that maybe this is my turn to laugh and come at the same time. Oh God, I’m so close. “We’re gonna christen every new floor,” I say. “With you, naked, on your hands and knees…” He cries out, his eyes wide. “And I’m going to spread your cheeks with my thumbs…” The words are tumbling from my mouth now. “…and I’m gonna eat your pretty little pink asshole until you’re sloppy…and screaming…”

  “I’m coming,” he whispers, and I’m there. I go deep as he shudders around me and I grab his cock, making him whimper and clench. He spills over my fingers at the exact same moment as I go off inside him. His cheeks are velvety red, his eyelashes trembling, and when he looks at me I think my heart will give out.

  Conscious of the condom, I pull out. Jody flops, thighs falling and sprawling, his cock still hard against his white-spattered belly. I can’t resist bending down to kiss it and he flinches, too sensitive. I lick up his come and crawl over him, and when I kiss him he groans softly in the back of his throat and winds his legs lazily around me. We’re buzzed, floating, shaken to our foundations.

  We don’t speak for a long time, but he’s the one who breaks the silence. When he does he whispers. “Is perfect still just for diving scores?”

  Later, much later, I sit awake by the glow of my phone screen while Jody sleeps. I’ve written this message several times over, but I can’t seem to make my excuse sound convincing, so here it is.

  I know this is going to sound insane, but I need to tell you why I’m not going to make New Year. I’m in love, Jo. I know it’s too soon, and I know everyone will tell me he’s a rebound, but I don’t care, because he’s one of the best and kindest people I’ve ever met in my life, and when I’m with him I feel like…

  I glance down at Jody, who’s sleeping soundly, the covers pulled up to his chin and his fingers curled loosely over his cheek. I’ve been inside him twice now, the second time with him on top. He rode my dick slow but hard, luxuriating in his pleasure and drawing it out so long that when I finally came I was almost delirious.

  She doesn’t need that level of detail, although once upon a time she’d been the first person I’d told when I was no longer a virgin.

  We’re in a motel in the middle of a snowstorm right now, but it feels like spring is blooming all around me. I’m alive again, Jo. I thought about that expensive white elephant of a house and I got that twitch again – you know the one under my left eye that makes me nuts when I’m stressed? When I felt it I realized I hadn’t felt it since the breakup. I’d been so messed up that my body was beyond twitches, like it knew that registering distress that way was pointless, because I was in too much pain to pay attention to it. But I can feel it right now. It’s fluttering under my eye and it’s annoying as shit, but I’m glad of it in a way, because it’s the kind of hurt that says ‘You’re healing’, and I am. I’m healing and healthy and I’m so fucking crazy in love…

  “Mm…” Jody stirs, frowning into the bluish glow from the screen. He’s so barely awake that he hardly knows he’s human, but he reaches for me all the same.

  “Hey, little Pumpkin…” I pass my hand over his hair and he grabs my wrist, places a sleepy, thoughtless kiss on the inside of it.

  “Cold…” he murmurs, and a fierce, sudden tenderness takes hold of my heart and squeezes until I feel liquid sting the corners of my eyes.

  “I’m coming,” I say, and look back at the words I’ve written. Stiff. Stupid. Inadequate. I mash the delete button until they’re gone and cut to the chase.

  Sorry. Can’t make New Year’s after all.

  “Who were you texting?” he says, as I snuggle back down, pulling the covers up over his shoulders. The skin feels chilly, but further down he’s warm, his belly hot against me, his cock rising to attention again as our legs twine beneath the covers.

  “My sister,” I say. “I’m not going to New York. I’m staying here. With you.”

  11

  Jody

  I always hated the sound the upstairs plumbing made, and that was before it was cold enough to freeze the pipes. Like I keep explaining to Chris, I always had my reasons for the things I did, whether it was making porn in the bedroom or taking my baths from a bucket in the kitchen.

  Of course, these days taking a spongebath in the kitchen is a whole lot more fun than it used to be, now he’s given himself permission to stare. Despite the cold I stroll in with a half chub, because I know he’s into it.

  He looks me up and down, taking in the boots, the bare ass, the empty bucket swinging against my thigh. “You’re going to catch cold,” he says. “Walking around like that.”

  “Maybe. But I’m gonna get banged a lot, so there’s a trade-off.”

  Chris gets up from the chair beside the fire. I can still taste his last orgasm on the back of my tongue. Last night we got high on something other than each other, and I was too lazy to go upstairs to piss. And that got me excited somehow, because he’s so clean and so proper and I wanted to be a dirty little animal for him. I had this feeling that he’d never had anything other than a well-scrubbed cock in his mouth and that me being filthy might do something for him, but even I couldn’t have imagined the light in his eyes when I half-unbuttoned my fly and asked him if he wanted to come and watch me pee off the back porch. He held my dick and kissed the back of my neck while I pissed, and then I felt him rock hard and exposed against the bare crack of my ass. I thought that was how it was going to go for a moment – just hands and humping and puffs of freezing breath – but then he told me to turn around and dropped to his knees. He licked me clean like he’d been wanting to do it his whole life.

  He takes off his parka and wraps it around my shoulders. The empty bucket hits the floor as he backs me against the edge of the kitchen table. My half chub swells to full and he laughs as he takes it in his hand. “How do you have anything left in there?” he says. “My balls are running on fumes.”

  It’s crazy but I could go again. His hands aren’t as soft as they used to be, but his tongue is like velvet and his lips are cushiony and delicious. “We really need to do something around here, you know…” he says, pulling the coat tight around me so that bare front of my body is pressed against him. I wrap my legs around his hips. I haven’t been fucked on the kitchen table yet: maybe that could be tonight’s main event.

  “No-o,” he says, guessing what I’m thinking. “Something that isn’t sex.”

  “But I love sex.”

  His hands slide under the parka. “I know you do.”

  “I’m really good at it.”

  He sighs. “Yes. You are.”

  “You should always make a point of doing the things you’re good at in life,” I say, working a hand up under his layers of clothing. I love his nipples. They’re round and dark and super sensitive. “Especially if you also enjoy them. That’s just a bonus.”

  There. Found one. I pinch it between forefinger and thumb and smile as his breath comes out in a rush over my lips. “That sounds like a thing,” he says. “Who said that?”

  “I don’t know. Confucius, maybe?”

  Chris groans. “And did Confucius have a house that was falling down around his ears at the time?”

  “Who knows?” I squeeze, tickling the hardened tip with my forefinger. I want to lick. And suck. I work my other hand under the edge of his sweatshirt, pushing it up over his belly. He’s still office-soft around the middle, but it only makes him better for cuddling.

  “Right,” says Chris. “And did he also have a fantastically hot boyfriend who kept walking around naked and testing the limits of the male
refractory period?”

  I give up wrangling with his layers and lie back on the table, the parka spread beneath me, my cock sticking straight up in the air. “Don’t think his bread was buttered that side, Boo. Your point?”

  He looks down at me and shakes his head. “I had one,” he says, and takes me in hand. “But I’ve totally forgotten what it was.” He lowers his head and presses a kiss on my belly. “God, I love your penis.”

  “I know. Yours is really great, too.”

  Chris teases me with a long, slow lick and pulls my thighs around his neck. “You bring out the best in it,” he says, his tongue on my balls. “Mmm…holy shit, we’re so good at sex.”

  “I know, right?” Hell yeah. We’re doing this. Is it the third time today, or the fourth?

  He fingers the edge of my butthole and giggles. “Do you have any idea how stupid we sound right now?”

  “Well, we have fucked each other’s brains out.”

  “Point,” he says, and licks my cock again. “You wanna do it on the table?”

  “Duh.”

  “Okay,” he says, straightening up. “Good. I think my balls might implode, but I’m willing to give it a shot.” He drops his pants and takes it out, and I’m so pleased to see it that I almost cheer. I really can’t get enough of him right now. He bends me back on the table, his cock settling alongside mine as he kisses me. I’m moving already, impatient to get off, although I’ve been in this house long enough to keep an ear out for the kind of squeaks and creaks that warn of yet another floor about to give way.

  “Oh God, I love you,” he says, his breath hot on my lips.

  “I love you.” No finesse this time. This is going to be a fast, dirty grind and I’m into it. I wrap a thigh around the back of his to get more purchase, and then I hear something. Not a creak, or at least I don’t think so, but it’s enough to set my senses to a different kind of emergency. “Chris, wait. Did you hear something?”

  He nibbles the edge of my ear. “Other than the sound of my parched testicles screaming ‘not again’?”

  “No, I’m serious. Listen.”

  He stops for a second and I relax a little, my vision of us crashing to our deaths through the kitchen floor receding now that I realize that noise is coming from outside the house.

  “Is that a car?” I say, wondering who would be driving down our bumpy ass dirt road at this time of the day. “Did you call the foundation guy?”

  “No. Not yet.” He hears it too, because he straightens up and pulls up his pants.

  “Then who the hell is that?”

  “Oh my God,” says Chris. “It’s my sister. I just know it. Me flaking on New Year was the last straw.” He tugs the parka around me again. “For God’s sake, put some pants on. She carries pepper spray for exactly these kind of occasions.”

  I quickly grab a pair of sweats and follow Chris out onto the front porch.

  And my heart takes a dive, because it’s not his sister.

  It’s Jack. He found me. Again.

  He’s rolled up in a cab, and by the time I get there he’s already engaged in a loud argument with the driver, who he’s stiffed on a tip. I fish the emergency twenty from the lining of my boot and stomp down to the car.

  “Here,” I say, handing it to the driver. “Now take him right back where you found him.”

  I don’t know much Russian, but I know most of the dirty words, and I get a belt of them as the driver snatches the twenty, and turns the car around. “What the fuck?” I yell, but then he picks up speed, leaving me staring at a set of taillights and Jack. Chris hangs back on the porch steps, but I can tell he’s clocked the family resemblance. There’s no wriggling out of this one.

  “Chris,” I say. “This is my father, Jack Ohanian.”

  “Hello,” says Chris.

  “Hey,” says Jack, and looks up at the house. “Wow. This is something. What is that? Queen Anne?”

  “Eastlake,” says Chris.

  “Nice.” Dad points up at the details over the porch. “Stick style, right? What are we talking? Eighteen eighties?”

  “Seventy-six.”

  Jack whistles. “She’s a beauty. Yours?”

  I give Chris a warning look. He doesn’t have a nose for scams like I do, but I pray that he knows not to tell Jack more than is strictly necessary about our situation. “Yes,” says Chris, and that’s all he says. I exhale. I picked a smart one, thank God.

  “You know, you could make a fortune with a place like this,” says Jack. “Fix it up. Rent out rooms. It’d be a regular tourist trap. Sure, the winters might be kinda lean, but if you do well in the summer…and the fall. Hell, you’d clean up in the fall. You know how those suburban bimbos go bugnuts for fall foliage these days. Cram a pumpkin spice candle in every bathroom and paint everything white…”

  I sigh, already out of patience. “What the fuck are you doing here, Dad?”

  “Nice, son. Very nice. I came to see you.”

  “And?”

  The hurt look. Oh, I know that so well. Unfortunately for him I know that he doesn’t have real feelings. Narcissists don’t, beyond the howling rage they feel when they consider themselves unappreciated, which is almost all the time. “Because it’s you,” I say. “Because there’s always an ‘and’ with you. Always a scam or a grift.”

  He glances over at Chris. “Jody, you’re making your friend feel very uncomfortable.”

  “Do not even try, Dad,” I say, ushering Chris back inside. “Call a goddamn cab and go right back where you came from, because I made a New Year’s Resolution not to deal with your shit any more.”

  I slam the front door. The whole front of the house shakes ominously and I see Chris wince. For a moment we stand very still in the hallway, as tense as if we were listening out for an avalanche. Dust settles. I breathe.

  “Jody, I don’t have anywhere else to go,” says Jack, from outside.

  “Try Hell,” I say, and go into the kitchen where he can’t hear me. Chris follows.

  “You can’t just leave him out there,” he says. “He’ll freeze to death.”

  I shrug.

  “You don’t mean that,” says Chris.

  “Don’t I? He’s dead anyway.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “At Christmas,” I say. “He was hanging around the hotel, so I called my brother. And my brother told me this insane story about how Dad had been with him for three whole months in Oregon and didn’t drink, steal or go on a two-week bender involving cat tranquilizers. There’s only one thing in the world than could still scare Jack straight, and it carries a fucking scythe.”

  Chris stares open mouthed at me for a moment. “Then let him in. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Hello? Raised by wolves. I have half of his DNA and a lifetime of experience as to how he works. There’s a catch, Chris. There is always a catch, and it usually involves money, drugs or legal assistance. If he really is dying then why doesn’t he have the guts to come out and just tell us?”

  He sighs. “Jody, why don’t you just ask him?”

  There’s a question. “Because,” I say. “Because I want him to tell me. I want him to be honest with me. Just once. One time. Before he checks out for good. Is that really such a big thing to ask of my own father?”

  I can’t believe there’s anything left in me. After nearly thirty years of Jack draining every last drop of natural feeling from me, I find the last dregs of my Daddy issues lurking in some forgotten corner of my heart. And they sting like unholy hell.

  “No, honey,” Chris says, cupping my face in his hands. “No. It’s not.”

  I blink away the sudden, unexpected tears and Chris licks them from my eyelashes. I’m not sure if I’m crying over Jack or because I’m still so deep and so dumbly in love that a throwaway endearment can make me bawl like a baby. Or maybe it’s simply the way he senses my hurt and how soon he hurries to soothe it. I bury my face against his big, broad chest, listening to the thrum of his heart and
trying to talk myself out of the mistake I’m about to make.

  “If we let him in,” I say. “There’s a very good chance we’ll never get him out. He’s like ants.”

  “Well, what’s one more infestation in a house like this? You can’t leave him out there.”

  I sigh. “I know.”

  He kisses me again, pulls the corners of my eyes tight with his thumbs and kisses the lids, one after the other. “I know this is hard for you,” he says. “But I’m here, and I love you. And whatever happens between you two, I’m on your side, okay?”

  Somehow I manage to keep it together. “You are the best fucking boyfriend ever.”

  “I’m so not,” he says. “Sometimes I get high and kiss beautiful strangers at funerals.” Chris runs his fingers through my hair. “Come on. You know there’s no getting out of this. At least not tonight.”

  So I open the door.

  Dad looks at me with that searching, restless expression that’s more or less permanent now. Figuring it out. Looking for an angle. “Get in,” I say, and step back to let him in the house.

  “Thank you,” he says, and for a moment I think he’s going to try to hug me. Yeah, that’s not happening. “You won’t regret this, son.”

  “Whatever. I’m only doing it because leaving you outside in this weather is basically…whatever the word for killing your dad is, which I can’t think of right now.”

  “Patricide,” says Chris.

  “Right. That.”

  “Yeah, big no no,” says Jack, eyeballing the stained glass above the door. “Worse than killing your mother in some cultures. The Greeks had a whole big thing about it. And hospitality. That was a big deal, too. You should always let a stranger into your house in case they turn out to be a god in disguise.”

  Or a burned out grifter with a penchant for ketamine. Always an option.