Shhh...Mack's Side

by Jettie Woodruff

  “Yeah, yeah, let’s not sweat the small stuff.”

  I loved being on the beach, watching the half-dressed cheerleaders sing and dance. Their jumps and tumbles were circus-like, only in slow motion. Even the chants, singing from their lips were enlightened. Every word was like a singing bird. Beautiful. Okay, maybe I just loved being high. Everything was at peace. Every face, every color, the ocean, the sand, it was even beautiful when the two teams argued about points. They were showing so much emotion.

  I drank glasses full of red stuff one after another. Not really, I dumped it out, but Gia thought I did. She even took the last one from me.

  “Jesus, Mack. Slow down. You’re trashed already. I want to get laid.”

  “You want help?”

  “No, I can find my own guy. See the one right there, white shorts, standing by the volleyball pole? He’s been eyeing me since we got here. He’s cute.”

  “Gia, you can’t just go off with a strange guy. Don’t you know that’s how girls get sold into slavery?”

  “That’s not even true. That happened like once. You watch too much television.”

  “Yeah, the news. It happens all the time.”

  “Whatever. I’m not living my life being afraid of taking chances. If I did everything that had a caution, I’d sit around with my nose in a book.” I knew the comment was directed at me, but I was too happy to care. I was happy. Not sick. What the hell? I turned and heaved, right behind us in the sand.

  “I knew it. Go to the room. I don’t know why you wore your dress down here anyway. I’m going to have fun.”

  “I can’t leave you here alone.”

  “Why? I’m going to leave you alone soon anyway. Stay away from my parents. If you run into them, text me. Oh, and you might hear some noises coming from my room,” she teased. I’d definitely hear them unless he took her back to his place. I guess I wasn’t overly concerned. I’d seen the guy around the hotel with what I assumed was his parents, too. Besides, I wasn’t feeling so well.

  I never made it to my room. The music illuminating through the elevator speakers were being fed from the dining room. I didn’t stop on our 50th floor. I continued up. I couldn’t stop. The music was taking me up. I was floating. Eyes closed and arms out, the doors opened and then closed. A lady held the guys arm, not wanting to ride with me. I laughed and swayed my body to the music, hair falling around my face as I danced. Life was so good.

  I stepped out on a floor I was sure wasn’t meant for guests like me. It was industrial-like. No plush, red carpets or shiny marble floors. It was dim lit with an eerie feeling. The red exit on the white door was all that I saw. At first I cautiously walked around. It was a construction zone. The rooftop was being transformed into a dining room, but had a long way to go. The blue swirls in the white marble moved, swaying with the sound of the piano, also being transmitted to the rooftop through speakers.

  I fell to my knees and swirled my hands with the blue in the half finished floor. Magnificent. Majestic. Majestic. Wait. I said that. Royal. It was pure magic. Everything around me was pure magic. Looking up I saw the glass wall. One that would take me even closer to the clouds. The wall was door-less, but led to a side of the rooftop in the midst of becoming a rooftop dance floor. The music wasn’t piped out there, but I could still hear it from inside.

  The city lights below twirled and swirled below me. I squinted my eyes, trying to determine whether or not it was real. My ball, I thought, reaching for my handbag. It wasn’t over my shoulder anymore. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. Lights didn’t put on a show all on their own, but somebody could be doing it. We were in the city. Maybe they were doing it. The ocean was doing it, too. Everything was moving to the melodramatic tune.

  “Please get down from there.” I heard Kyle’s voice.

  Down? What did he mean, down? “Kyle, look. Look at the lights. See how they’re keeping rhythm with the piano? I love that piano player. Don’t you love him, Kyle?”

  “Yes, come down and I’ll make sure you get a signed CD from him. Please get down, McKenzie.”

  “I bet Gia could do a backflip on this ledge,” I pondered, looking down at the ledge beneath my feet. “She’s down there. Right over there.” I pointed, to the section of the beach we were supposed to be watching a cheer competition at.

  “She’s not there. I sent her to her room.”

  I laughed. I was really far up. I was so high, and not just in the air. I could have done anything I wanted, tackled anything thrown in front of me. I was on top of the world. Literally. “She’s not alone,” I giggled, sliding my feet, imitating a graceful swan.

  “McKenzie!” Kyle screamed. Why? Why was he screaming? Was I falling? I closed my eyes and felt the wind cut through my hair. I was falling. I was falling so fast. It was exhilarating. Like the first time Gia and I had ever gotten on a roller coaster. We were nine and Kyle sat between us, holding both our hands.

  “Don’t you ever do that again,” Kyle demanded. I felt his touch again. I was in his arms. Kyle caught me. I wasn’t falling anymore. This was real. Kyle was real. I touched his cheek, just to make sure. His face was soft on my fingers except for the stubble. They tickled. I studied his face. The lights blinked against his expression.

  “Kyle, what’s wrong with me?” I quietly asked, feeling the emotion from the music creeping in again. I was sad. Why was I sad?

  “Nothing is wrong with you, Kenzie. You’re perfect just the way you are. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re not.”

  “I think about you,” I blurted.

  “You think about me?”

  “All the time. I told you there is something wrong with me.”

  “Guess what?” He smiled, still holding me in his arms. “There’s something wrong with me, too.”

  “There is?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You think about me?”

  “All the time,” he admitted, mimicking my answer with a smile. This was real. Kyle was real. I was happy again. I came to my feet, wondering where and when I had removed my shoes. Kyle stood with me and I leaned my body into his. I didn’t see a thirty-eight year old man at all standing in front of me. I didn’t see a dad. I didn’t see any of that. I saw a man who loved me for who I was, every little hang up. He didn’t care.

  Kyle wrapped his arms around me and I closed my eyes, loving the feel of his strong arms embracing me, making it better, making me whole. That’s how I felt. That’s what Kyle did to me. I was complete with him.

  “This is the part where you’re supposed to be the adult and send me to my room with Gia.”

  “I don’t want you to go to your room.”

  And just like that. It was over. My mania shifted gears, and I was once again feeling invincible. The music. That’s what it was. The music and this light show.

  “Tell me how you feel,” Kyle coaxed, pulling my back to his front. Kyle knew what to do with me. He knew how intense my senses were right now. I immediately noticed the way his fingers explored my sensitive skin. He touched all of me, every single inch. I may have helped, moving his hands from my bare ankles to the tips of my fingers while I danced in front of him. Swaying to the rhythm of Todd McCoy, I acted out on my mania, knowing the realness of the crazy girl I was portraying. I didn’t care. Nobody was judging me. Kyle wasn’t judging me.

  He let me undress. Wearing nothing but a butterfly barrette and Gia’s diamond earrings, I let my naked body dance on Kyle’s. The emotions that we were sharing was out of this world. He felt it, too. Anyone that says you can’t make love without intercourse was crazy. Once I had Kyle’s shirt off, it was unbearable. My nerve endings stood on end.

  Naked, caressing each other in our nudeness, Kyle pulled me to the floor and kissed me. Really kissed me. Really, really, really kissed me. There isn’t a kiss in the world to compare it to. It’s like trying to teach a blind person the color of blue. How do you describe it? Ice? Ocean? The sky? Or would it be better to describe the opposite? Red
. Sometimes you have to see things the wrong way to see them the right way.

  That’s how it was with Kyle. Kyle made me feel like everything wrong with me was right. He was the only one who knew how crazy I could really be. Even crazy people can hide it. We know there’s something troubling going on inside us that the rest of the world wouldn’t understand. This wasn’t like that. Kyle understood. Kyle didn’t make me feel less of myself for being me. I didn’t have to be anyone but me.

  “Touch me, Kyle. Please touch me,” I panted, begging and thrashing my body like the kook that I was, needing more, needing all of him. I sprawled, opening my arms and legs like a descending hawk and glided. The sensation that surged my body sent me sliding away from his fingers with a kick of my legs. It was like warming your hands under hot water after freezing them. It felt so good it hurt.

  “We shouldn’t do this, Kenzie,” Kyle moaned, sliding his middle finger in and out of my pulsating sex.

  “Then leave,” I gasped, jostling my hips into his fingers.

  “I fucking can’t,” he confessed, biting down on my nipple.

  “Ahhh,” I painfully moaned. “Look at me, Kyle,” I requested, shoving him off with my knees. I spread myself and he looked. “Don’t touch it. Just look,” I requested, trying to spread my legs as much as I could. That part stunned him, and I wasn’t sure why. I opened my lips with my fingers and raised my hips. I wanted him to see all of me. Kyle fulfilled my wishes, adding to the emotions by running his hands up and down my legs. I didn’t understand his expression, then again, he’d probably never been told to look at some wild girl’s exposed sex. I know this went on for a long time, like twenty minutes. Every time he looked away I told him to look again, until I told him to touch me.

  Other than telling him to look at me, I directed him with my manic body. When I finally let him stop staring at my wide open sex, I let him touch me with his mouth. Grabbing his hair, I held him there, pulling and pushing while he devoured me, every inch of me. I came so hard, so amazingly, sensitively hard. Squeezing my legs around his head, I held him there, letting surge after surge take over my body.

  I never came down. Not once did I start to come down. The throbbing between my legs grew stronger. I got wetter, and I wanted more. I wanted things normal, teenage girls my age didn’t think about. I moved his head away by pulling his hair. Our eyes locked and stayed that way while I moved his fingers to my aching core. I chose his middle finger and guided it to my wet, throbbing sex. Moaning, I let him coat his finger before moving it to my ass. I was the one to press the tip of it in.

  “Kenzie, no,” he whispered, trying to pull away.

  I pushed his finger in more and moaned, not taking my eyes off his. Kyle looked down at his middle finger, trying to penetrate my ass and moved in a little more. Oh my god. I was going to come again. Kyle spread more of my juices from my slit to his finger, helping it to slide in and out with ease, sending my body into an endorphin frenzy.

  After the second wave of ecstasy, I slid like a slivering snake, moving my body down Kyle from beneath. He paused when I took his hardness into my mouth, but didn’t stop me. My reflexes didn’t work. I consumed his shaft with my mouth and played with myself with my fingers. Kyle pushed himself in and out of me, watching with soft moans. And there was the look. The crazed look of lust that I would die for, but why was I suddenly afraid of him? I looked away, closing my eyes to keep it. I needed to keep us here, in this moment.

  I made myself come for the third time, sucking on Kyle’s massive rod. He did stop me after that. He was close to coming. I slithered back to his mouth and kissed him. He still tasted like me. I liked the way I tasted on his mouth. I loved the smell from my oversensitive nose, and I loved the taste on my hypersensitive tongue.

  Holding my breath, I felt him slide in. Shit. We were really doing this. I was about to have sex with Gia’s dad. This was real. Crap. This was real. Sliding in a little more, I bit down on his shoulder and dug my nails in his back. I bit harder and screamed.

  Kyle stopped and looked down at me. “Please tell me I didn’t just take your virginity.”

  “You did. That hurt. That hurt a lot.” I accused, feeling the burning between my legs. That was heightened, too. Ugh. I didn’t like that part. “Please don’t stop,” I begged.

  Kyle shook his head, staring at me with something I couldn’t quite put a finger on. Defeat, maybe. He moved in again and I stiffened. “Relax, Kenzie, I’m going to go very slow. If it hurts, tell me.”

  I nodded, afraid to relax. It was going to hurt again. I was sure of it.

  Kyle moved a little more and pulled out. He moved in and out of me going a little deeper every time. Our gazes shared an emotional trance, making love like no other ever has. And we became one. Kyle and I were one.

  “McKenzie. What the hell are you doing?”

  “McKenzie?!”

  “McKenzie, get down.”

  Down? Down from what? Looking around the restaurant, I looked at the stunned piano player. He stopped playing. I climbed down on my own, moving my hand away when Colton tried to take it.

  “How could you let me do that, Kyle?” I asked, stunned.

  “Kyle?”

  I walked away from the stares and scrutiny. How could he let me do that?

  “You danced on a piano, but you were on your meds?” Lila questioned.

  Oh for heaven’s sake. Sit down. “Yes, I don’t know what happened. I was dancing with Colton after dinner and the next thing I know, I’m being pulled from a trance and I’m on top of the piano.”

  “What sort of trance? What were you thinking about?”

  “Kyle.”

  “Hmm, interesting. Let’s talk about AJ.”

  “AJ? I thought we were talking about Kyle. You made me talk about him and now you want to move on? You’re a quack.”

  “You said you’ve only ever loved two men. I now know that one of them is Kyle, the other is in Chicago, someone you were interning with, and maybe there’s a third.”

  “It was Detroit, and there isn’t going to be a number three. I’m not in love with Colton,” I assured Lila.

  “How has he been since you decided to make a fool of yourself?”

  “You suck as a therapist. You do know that, right? I swear to god, I did not stop taking my medicine. I just went off into another mind, and I don’t even know how or when I got up there.”

  “Where was your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He went to the bathroom, but I don’t remember that either. How did you know about Kyle?”

  “Child, you’ve been telling me how much you love him since you walked through that door,” Lila accused, nodding toward the door. “Kyle has always understood you, hasn’t he, McKenzie? Even when you were a child, a tiny little girl, with information running through your scared little mind, he understood you, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, staring down at the desk calendar. Lila had a dentist appointment after this.

  “Why do you think that is, McKenzie?”

  I thought about it, frowning. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me, or maybe it’s because you don’t want to know. Maybe you’re afraid to learn that you already know the truth.”

  “I have no idea what that even means.”

  “I think you do. Tell me about AJ.”

  I took an exasperated breath, wondering what the hell just happened, and leaned back. “We were both interns at a paper in Detroit. He was a reporter and I was a page designer. I met him the day before we both started work. Turns out he rented an apartment in the same building. My mother picked it. I would have never picked that one, but she wanted me within walking distance of the paper. I had all the necessities within three blocks of my safe neighborhood.”

  “How was college for you?”

  “Fine. I went to school to go to school. I never partied or anything. I got a four year degree in two years plus another two year degree in g
raphic design.”

  “Impressive, although I’m not surprised. You’re lucky you could study.”

  “Yeah, lucky me. I know things most people shouldn’t know. I don’t know that I’d call that luck.”

  “Really? And what would you call it, McKenzie?”

  “Desperation,” I sadly responded, studying her desk calendar. I had ten more days before Mr. Nichols would sit in front of the parole board and plead his case. Beg to be set free, promising to be a law abiding citizen. Oh wait. He lost that, too. His conviction stripped him of that, as well. He’d never vote for the president of the United States again.

  “You read to fill your mind?”

  “No,” I said jumping up. “I read for the information. Information I’m going to need later on. I need the information to replace other thoughts. Other thoughts that I don’t like. I’m the freak, reading the back of everything I touch. Information for later,” I yelled, pacing, tapping my finger to my temple. Lila didn’t seem at all fazed by my outburst. Her expression never changed.

  “Let’s get back to AJ. How old is he?” she asked, nodding her head for me to get back on track.

  “How old is he?” I frowned.

  “Yes. How old is AJ?”

  “He’s, I don’t know, forty maybe.”

  “I see.”

  “You see what?”

  “How old is Colton?”

  “Okay, I see where you’re going with this. I don’t have daddy issues. If that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Have you always dated older men?”

  Dropping back to her chair, I sighed, fidgeting with the corner of the desk calendar, I drifted back to the way things were for me back then. She was right. I never did like boys. Ever.

  I must have been the racket going on next door. The office next to Lila’s was getting a makeover. The hammering was faint but still there.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. And the next thing I knew, I was seventeen again.

  “I’m going to Gia’s. How the hell am I supposed to study with all this noise?” I whined, entering the kitchen. “Really, you guys?” I asked, walking in on a make-out session. They were so gross and they got worse the older they got. My mom and dad still argued. They would always argue. Nothing was ever going to change that, but they did love each other. That I knew to be true. That was real.