The Fixer: New Wave Newsroom

by Jenny Holiday

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. When he’s that drunk, she usually comes back to our room.”

  Well, then. There was only one correct course of action to take. I stood up. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Five

  Matthew

  “I can’t just hide out in your room indefinitely,” Jenny said, even as she lowered herself to perch on the edge of my bed, which, since the desk chair was covered with a painting I’d draped there to dry last night, was the only place in the small room to sit. My room was a disaster, actually, strewn with clothes and art supplies. In her fancy dress, she looked like a princess in a hovel.

  Normally, I would have agreed with her. I didn’t like having people here. Hell, I didn’t like people generally, which was why I avoided the other guys on the floor. And since I didn’t have a dining package, I didn’t have to deal with them in the cafeteria, either. People came with shit—emotions, demands, needs—that would only distract me from doing what needed to be done. But, somehow, more than I didn’t want people in my room, I didn’t want Jenny to risk another run-in with Royce or Nessa. Obviously, she was going to have to see her roommate at some point, but just…not yet. But I couldn’t say that without sounding like an idiot. “You don’t have to stay. Just give me five minutes. I want to show you something.” I cleared the desk chair, sat down, and rummaged around in the desk for a fresh sheet of paper and a fountain pen. “But I was thinking…” I twisted to look at her over my shoulder. “If you stay until it gets really late, she might be asleep when you get back to your room.” I shrugged. “Whatever you want. But you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

  She shot me a grin. “Thanks.” Then she used each big toe to slip off the opposite foot’s shoe and swung her legs up so she was half sitting, half lying back against my pillows.

  I should have stopped staring at that point. She clearly wasn’t going anywhere, at least not immediately. It’s just that the sight was so incongruous. Rainbow Brite, all sandy brown and electric blue, glossy and tough, innocent and bold, sprawled out on my bed as if she belonged there. And her dress had hiked up a bit as she’d laid back, exposing a pair of smooth pale thighs.

  I had managed to sublimate pretty much every biological urge I’d had since coming to college. I ate just enough to keep me going, trying to spend as little money as possible on what I forced myself to regard as mere fuel. I drank water. It was free, and there was no danger of too much water impairing your judgment.

  I hadn’t had sex since high school. The girls I’d slept with back then had been enjoyable diversions, and they’d come on to me. It sounds awful to state it so clinically, but they were there for the taking, so I took. That didn’t happen at Allenhurst. Besides, I hadn’t really even looked up long enough in my time here to make lasting eye contact with anyone. I had no time for relationships—this phase of life was about getting good grades, learning actual technique in my art, and working enough to survive. It was about getting what I needed to set me up for the next phase, when my real life would begin. So if I was horny, I’d close my eyes and beat off to an imaginary girl.

  And she never looked anything like the real one currently draped across my bed.

  “What?”

  The imaginary girl of my masturbatory fantasies also didn’t talk.

  “You’re looking at me like something is wrong,” she said.

  I turned back to the desk and shifted in my seat, trying to ease the pressure that had built in my groin. Something was wrong, that was true. But that wasn’t why we were here. I was used to self-denial, so better to just get on with it. I picked up the pen, and she seemed to accept that I wasn’t going to say anything, because for the next few minutes the only sounds in the room were the scratch of my pen and her soft breathing.

  When I was done, I turned my desk chair around to present her with the fruits of my labor.

  “What’s that?” she asked, sitting up and scooching to the edge of the bed to peer at the paper I held.

  Here we went. Silently, I handed her the drawing.

  There was no noise in the room while she absorbed it. I was struck suddenly with the urge to minimize my efforts. “You sat for the portraits,” I said, feeling my face grow warm. “So I figured the least I could do was give you a cartoon in return.” It was about the goddamned art building. I’d drawn a little picture of a crowd protesting outside it, except the crowd was made up of famous artists that regular people were likely to recognize: da Vinci, Andy Warhol, and so on. It wasn’t the most imaginative thing, but it was the best I could do on the spur of the moment.

  She looked up, and…shit. To say the smile that blossomed lit up her face would be an understatement. It might as well have been powered by the same neon that made her dress blaze that fierce blue. But at the same time, her eyes had grown suspiciously dewy. She was full of contradictions, this one.

  I expected a torrent of words. I knew her ways now, and after she got over her shock that her campaign had finally succeeded, she would start talking and stop maybe sometime tomorrow or the next day.

  I did not expect her to kiss me.

  My single room was so small that there were only a couple feet between the bed and the desk. Since she’d moved to the edge of the bed, all she had to do was lean forward. She pressed her lips to my cheek and murmured, just before they hit, “This is wonderful.”

  I froze. I hadn’t shaved in a couple days, so I had more than a five-o’clock shadow going. Her lips were too soft for me. She was too soft for me.

  But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t push her away. I just sat there, letting her put her mouth against me like a brand.

  It was a chaste kiss, on the surface of things. It was just her lips against my cheek, and her hands rested in her lap, for fuck’s sake. But, just like the other night, at the construction site, it was like she was filling me with lava. It ran down my throat, swirled around my chest, and then settled in my dick, where it burned hot and fierce.

  She pulled away, but only slightly. “Thank you for this,” she whispered. See? This was what nice girls did. They said thank you. Then they gave you a kiss on your rough cheek.

  Though she’d moved back enough to speak, she hadn’t returned to sitting upright on the bed. She stayed leaning forward, listing toward me, bracing her hands on her thighs.

  I let my gaze slide over a bare neck that would make Degas weep. Across pale, unblemished shoulders. The bodice of her dress went straight across, a horizontal ruffle making a dramatic line between white skin and brilliant blue dress. Earlier, it hadn’t been showing much in the way of cleavage, but now that she was leaning forward, a gap had appeared between the ruffle and her breasts.

  I couldn’t stop looking at that gap. Why didn’t she just move back? She had her cartoon. She’d deposited her perfunctory kiss. We were done here.

  Weren’t we?

  “I don’t want to graduate a virgin,” she whispered.

  A jolt shot through my body. I could feel each rib painfully expanding as I sucked in a breath and brought my eyes up to look into hers. In contrast to the tentative tone of her last sentence, her eyes were fierce, glittering, determined. Those were the eyes of the investigative journalist she would become.

  “I have a sponge in my bag,” she added, her voice catching a little.

  “Oh, Rainbow Brite,” I said, though it came out sounding more like a groan. I let my head fall to my chest. I couldn’t look at her anymore. The room should have been silent then, but I swear, the blood in my ears was like thunder.

  She might have spoken and I hadn’t heard her, because the next thing that happened was she moved her hands from her thighs to mine. She just laid them there, but it was nearly enough to make me black out.

  I flinched. I was startled, turned on, wary…everything. Everything all at once.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, snatching her hands away.

  No. The protest probably started with my dick, to be honest, but it rose up
through my chest and down through my legs simultaneously, spreading until it swirled throughout my whole body, propelling me toward her.

  I wasn’t going to be the reason Jenny Fields was sorry.

  I was also done being a goddamned monk.

  So I grabbed her and fell back onto the bed, hauling her on top of me. She shriek-laughed in delight, and it did something to me. The ribs that had twinged before were opening like doors now, but it wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t pretty. It felt like my chest was cracking open, jagged bits of bone piercing pathetic, inadequate lungs I couldn’t get enough air into. So I did the only thing I could do, which was to kiss her. She melted into me immediately, straddling me with her legs and letting her whole weight settle on me as she sighed and opened her mouth.

  Jenny

  When I pushed open the door to Matthew’s room, I sent a silent prayer to the sky. Please don’t let him have changed his mind. (Also: Please let me have inserted that sponge correctly.) If I had been on the pill, this awkward interruption of the action wouldn’t have been necessary. We could have gone right from rolling around on his bed kissing to…the rest. God, I could feel myself blush just thinking the words.

  “Why me?” he said, the moment I’d shut the door behind me.

  “Look at you,” I said. He was propped up against his headboard with his shirt off—we’d gotten that far before I’d had to excuse myself for momentum-destroying sponge insertion. The twilight slanted in though the window, painting the planes of his lean, wiry frame with warm pink light and illuminating those insanely green eyes. His black hair fell in his face, and he swiped it away. Someone needed to paint him, for heaven’s sake.

  He ducked his head and actually looked embarrassed. Could I ever have imagined, back when he was snarling at me and I was trying to bribe him with pizza, that I could make him blush? It made me feel bold. Powerful.

  “I’m no prize, Jenny,” he said, meeting my eyes again.

  “I’m not looking for a prize,” I countered, reaching around and undoing the zipper that ran up the back of my dress with a confidence I was faking. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, in truth, but I didn’t really care to parse it now. I just wanted to get out of my head. That part at least wasn’t going to be hard, because just looking at him zoomed my body back to where it had been before, when we were kissing. A pulse began to beat between my legs, and as I let the dress fall and pool at my feet, the cool air hit my breasts, making my nipples peak almost painfully. I might have been a virgin, but I knew this feeling. I just hadn’t known I could get so close without touching myself.

  “God,” he choked out, running his hands through his hair almost like he was having second thoughts.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with second thoughts. Had the onslaught of desire pressing down on me clouded my judgment? Had I made myself ridiculous? I pushed back at the questions. I didn’t want them. They would only make me cautious, and that caution would hobble me right now. So I reached for the one word that made sense to me in that moment: “Matthew.”

  He was off the bed in a flash, hands grabbing my hips as he crashed his mouth down on mine. Once he had steadied me, his hands came up to my breasts, sliding up under the strapless bra I wore and tracing their undersides, all the while making wicked, deep incursions into my mouth with his tongue. I was on fire everywhere he touched. I was on fire everywhere, period.

  And then, with no warning, he fell to his knees.

  I knew what he was doing. I mean, I knew with my mind. I was acquainted with the act in theory. But that didn’t mean I was prepared for him to shove my panties down around my knees and bury his face between my legs.

  It also didn’t mean I was able to stop myself from asking, on a shaky exhale, “What are you doing?” As I spoke, he darted a tongue out and licked me like I was an ice cream cone, sending a jolt of pleasure so strong through me that my question was followed by a moan. And I was sorry I’d asked it, because now, tilting his head up to meet my eyes, he was going to stop and answer me.

  “I’m eating you out.”

  The matter-of-fact way he said it—oh, it did something to me. But part of me was still incredulous. “Why?”

  “Because I want to.” His eyes narrowed, almost like he was angry. But I’d seen him angry, and this wasn’t that. “And judging by how wet you are, you do too. So do you think you can shut the fuck up long enough for me to make you come?”

  Oh, crap. His words alone almost did it. I had hoped I’d be able to shake off the heavy cloak of virginity I didn’t want to wear anymore, but I had imagined it playing out more…traditionally. But now I wanted…this instead. So I nodded, not so much because I was obeying his command but because I no longer trusted my voice.

  Matthew grabbed one of my buttocks with each hand to anchor himself, and apparently that initial lick had merely been an exploratory exercise, because, groaning, he sank his tongue into my folds. He set a rhythm of plunging in and out, licking me so intimately I should have been embarrassed, but I couldn’t manage to do anything but gasp. With each stroke of his tongue, it was like a camera was gradually zooming in on the innermost part of me, making me heavy, saturated with sensation.

  The fullness built and built until I thought I might not be able to stand it anymore. It was too much and, at the same time, not enough. Instinctively, I tried to buck my hips, but he tightened his grip on me, securing my butt with his forearms, all the while keeping up the wicked rhythm with his tongue. I was immobilized, pinned in place between his face and his arms, and I was so, so close. I let out a little sob of frustration.

  He seemed to understand what it signified better than I did, because he lifted his face a little and swirled his tongue on my clit before pulling off long enough to rasp, “Is this what you want, Jenny?” Not waiting for an answer, he returned to my clit, taking it between his lips and sucking gently.

  “Yes,” I cried, grabbing his shoulders to keep from falling over.

  A few seconds of suction, and I was shuddering and trying to muffle my screams so I wouldn’t wake his neighbors.

  Matthew

  I waited until she was done shaking, holding her tight with my arms wrapped around her middle—I was still kneeling—and willing myself not to come then and there. I had only known her a couple weeks, but I knew her well enough to know that in a minute, she’d become all flustered and embarrassed.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  There it was—not at all like the shouted invocations of the Lord that had been ripping from her throat earlier.

  That was my cue. Because whatever else was going to happen, I didn’t want her to be embarrassed. So, in a repeat of my earlier move, I flipped us both onto the bed, but this time I came down on top of her, bracing myself on my elbows as I kissed her breasts.

  “That was—”

  I whipped myself up and kissed her mouth. I didn’t want to talk. Not yet. I just wanted to…savor this. Unlike at the construction site, there was no danger. No hurry. Nothing stopping us.

  It sounded idiotic, but since it was her first time, I’d wanted to make sure she came. I wasn’t schooled in the ways of virgins, but the conventional wisdom seemed to be that it could hurt the first time. And I didn’t want to disappoint her. I’d almost made it through my time at this school without giving a shit about any of my fellow students or what they thought of me. Almost. So, yeah, I’d been…intent in my onslaught. I’d thought I’d been doing it for her, but honestly, ten seconds in, and nothing had ever turned me on more than torturing that girl with my tongue. And now I wanted to her to make those gutting mewling noises again. There had been something insanely hot about anchoring her pelvis, having her at my mercy while I’d worked her over.

  But it turned out that a Jenny who was free to exert her will was pretty hot, too. Especially when her will seemed to involve wrapping her legs around my hips and clinging to me as if I were the art building in the path of the bulldozers.

  “Oh my God, Matthew,” she breath
ed, breaking the deep kiss she’d been planting on me. “I had no idea.”

  I grinned against her mouth. Honestly, I hadn’t either. But I wasn’t about to say that. So I bent to kiss my way down to her breasts. It suddenly seemed a crime that they had been so thoroughly neglected before, when I’d been on my knees. I took of her bra to reveal perfect handfuls of soft flesh, tipped by dark pink buds that I couldn’t not put my mouth on.

  She inhaled sharply, and I would have stopped to check that it was a happy inhale and not a distressed one, but she also bucked her hips, and since her legs were still wrapped around me, she lifted her whole pelvis off the bed and pressed it against my cock. It was like she was trying to angle me inside her.

  “Will you do this already?” she pleaded.

  I stopped everything, and her eyes, which had been half-closed, flew open. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes.

  I laughed. In that moment, she was so authentically herself, the Rainbow Brite-Jenny-journalist-crusader, that I couldn’t help it.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.” There was a tinge of impatience in her tone.

  Or maybe it wasn’t her tone. Maybe it was the hand that snaked down between our bodies and grabbed my dick.

  I grunted, and she let go like it was on fire.

  “Oh my God. Was that wrong? I’ve never touched one of those before.”

  I shook my head, trying not to laugh again. I wasn’t laughing at her, but I didn’t know how to explain it. I was laughing because it was either that or detonate.

  So I slid in. I was inside Jenny, and it was like all her crazy colors were exploding inside me as she stretched to accommodate me. She was so tight. So slick. I stayed still for a moment, afraid that if I moved, we’d be done before we started. After a few breaths to gather myself, I started a slow rhythm, using one hand on her clit again. She must have still been sensitive from her orgasm because she winced when I made contact, but I persisted. She was trying to hold her head up, but after a minute of moving against each other, she gave up on a huge sigh and let her head fall back against the pillow as her eyes slipped closed.