by JA Huss
It is stunning. And it cost almost as much as a house on Little Raven Street.
“I get all of this,” Smith says, leaning over her shoulder to whisper in her ear once the choker is in place. “You. Every bit of you is mine.”
Chella glances at me to see what I’ll say about that.
I say nothing. Neither does Quin. What we gave her are trinkets in comparison. And how we feel about her is comparable. She is a toy to us.
The collar from Smith says she is no toy to him from this moment forward.
She leans into Smith and kisses him on the lips. Smith allows it, since the four of us are together and he can break the no-touching rule. But he doesn’t let it linger. He backs away and says, “Let me know when you’re ready to go home. I’ll drop you off.”
Quin shoots me a look. We already talked about this yesterday. I want her here tonight because Smith owes me some time. I totally understand the whole father fiasco. And I totally get that he just claimed her. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want my night back.
“I think I’m gonna stay here tonight,” Chella says. “I don’t even have a tree at home. I’d just be depressed tomorrow morning when I woke up.”
“Sure,” Smith says, doing his best not to look at me. “I’ll walk you up.”
“OK,” Chella says. “I’m tired. I’m gonna take a bath and go to bed.” She kisses me once more, this time leaning into my ear to say, “Thank you. It was a special night.”
“It’s not over yet,” I whisper back as I lean into her neck. “I’ll be up later.”
“Good,” she says. “I have a present for you.”
And then she hops out of my lap and gives Quin a kiss too, before letting Smith take her hand and lead her down to the elevator.
“What was that?” Quin asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, taking a sip of my drink.
“Do you think he’s pissed off that you’re taking your night back?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure I should care. He’s been living at her fucking house. I’m not done with her yet. And she’s obviously not done with us. So…”
“Yeah, me either. I’m all for the quad this week, but I’m gonna spend my last night alone with her… alone with her. Ya know?”
We let it go. I take off the Santa suit and hand it over to the bartender, then straighten my tie and put my suit coat on.
Smith doesn’t come back until eleven forty-five and when he takes a seat across from me at the table, he asks, “So you’re going up tonight?”
“It’s my night,” I say. “We agreed.”
“And you don’t want me there?”
“I’m not gonna fuck her, I told you that.”
He stares at me for a moment. “Then I guess I’ll go home.”
“It’s not even your home, Smith. It’s her home.”
“Apparently this is her home now,” he says.
I watch him walk out, pissed off and probably hurt. But I don’t care. The rules are the rules. And whether he likes it or not, we’re still playing the game.
It only works if we don’t fall in love.
He knew that going in.
It only ends when she quits.
And right now, she’s still playing to win.
The rules are the rules.
At midnight, I get up, walk down the steps to the landing, and get in the elevator. When I get to her apartment door, I open it up. It’s not even locked.
Chella is standing in front of the window wearing… Jesus Christ. Straps. That’s the only way to describe what she’s wearing. Straps. Across her thighs, across her belly, across her breasts. Except these straps cover absolutely nothing.
She turns and leans against the window. I imagine how cold the glass feels against her bare skin. “I have a confession to make,” she says.
I raise my eyebrows at her.
“I lied. I’ve been a very bad girl this year.”
I turn to close the door so I can smile, but when I turn back, the smile is gone. “What have I told you about lying to me, Marcella?”
I’ve told her nothing, but I’m certain she can extrapolate the answer I’m looking for in this little fantasy.
“You said I’d be punished next time.” She bites her lip. “Will you punish me?”
It almost sounds like begging. And yeah, I’d fucking love to punish the hell out of her right now. Downstairs in the room I have set up for it.
But that’s not what I’m looking for, even if she is.
I walk over to the couch and sit down. “Come here, Marcella.” I like to use her full name when I’m being stern. And I will happily be stern with her.
She feigns nervousness and then slowly walks over to me. She’s wearing the most erotic fuck-me heels I’ve ever seen. Strappy ones, like that thing she’s calling an outfit.
“Sit on my lap, sweetheart.” I pat my thigh and she obediently takes her place. “Confess your sins to me, Chella. And then I’ll decide what to do with you.”
She starts playing with her breasts. “I’m a slut,” she says. “I’m addicted to sex. I love it so much, Bric. I can’t stop myself.” Two fingers slide down between her legs. The “outfit” has nothing in the way of panties. It’s just more straps, digging in to the flesh on each side of her puffy pussy. “I think about you all the time. I want your cock deep inside me. I want it in my mouth, down my throat—”
Holy shit. I wonder if she’s like this with Quin? Maybe I’m not giving her enough credit?
Stop it, Bric. She’s playing a game with you. And Smith is falling in love with her. You do not start a new game while you’re playing the old one.
“I want you,” she continues. “I want you to beat the bad out of me.”
I smile at her, grab her hair and yank her head back. “I will, Chella. I will.”
And then I come to my senses.
“But,” I say, smiling at her as I let her hair go. I bring her close to me and give her a hug. “But look, Chella. I’m kind of dangerous in that respect. I don’t think it would work for us.”
She clicks her tongue. “Bric! Who turns down dirty submissive sex? This was my present to you and you’re ruining it!”
I laugh and hug her, my hand rubbing the curve of her ass cheek. “I can give you a taste If you like. I can do that much. But take my word on this, sweetie. You’re not ready for the kind of dominance I display. But I can still be fun. And I can still make it hurt.”
“I’ve been bad, Mr. Bricman,” she says again in her sultry voice, looking up at me with her smoky eyes. “Very, very bad.”
We both laugh this time.
“I bet you have, you little whore. Lie face down with your head in my lap.”
She does it without question. And damn, I’m sorry I didn’t realize earlier she might be into this. I’d have taken her downstairs and taught her how to submit to me properly instead of allowing her to become Rochelle’s replacement.
But it’s done now. And there’s no way to go back.
She will be Smith’s… eventually.
But tonight she’s mine.
I spank her. Hard. The sound of my hand on her ass cheeks fills the room.
I spank her until she comes all over my fingers.
Chapter Thirty-Two - Quin
Christmas night, at exactly midnight, I make my way up to Chella’s apartment. I’ve been dying to see her all day. All three of us have. We’ve been downstairs the whole time waiting to see if she’d come down. For breakfast, then lunch, then dinner.
But she didn’t. She stayed inside and kept to herself.
I wonder if the holidays are hard for her? If she thinks about her childhood. I don’t know much about what happened, but I don’t need to know much. What happened with her father the other night is explanation enough.
She was neglected. Somehow, some way.
The door is unlocked when I try the knob and when I enter, there’s Christmas music playing and the remnants of wrapping paper and boxes all over the
living room floor.
We give her the real presents on Christmas Eve, but Bric came back up here early this morning while she was still sleeping and stacked dozens of presents under her tree.
We got her toys.
A dollhouse, Barbies, sparkling, glittery craft kits, a stereo—people don’t get those anymore, but it was something you asked for at Christmas as a teenager back in the day. We got her a diary, and some Lego sets. All the things she missed out on growing up.
“Chella?” I call into the apartment. She’s nowhere to be seen.
“Back here!” A faint yell from the bedroom.
I walk down the hallway and enter the bedroom, find it empty. “Chella? Where are you?”
“Up here!” she calls again, this time louder. “In the closet.”
“In the closet?” I walk over to the closet—hers, not ours—and peek inside. “What the fuck?”
Chella’s head pops out from the attic door in the ceiling. “Hey. Come up here.”
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Where the hell did this ladder come from?”
“It’s an attic, Quin. And it’s my present to you.” She smiles, her head hanging upside down, her dark hair falling over her shoulders. “Come on. I’m dying to show you this. I’ve been keeping it a secret for a week and I can’t take it anymore.”
I climb up the steep attic ladder and peek inside as she scoots away and backs up against a small circular window at the far end of the room, her head outlined by the lights around the gold dome of the capitol building. “What the fuck is all this?”
“What does it look like?” Chella asks. “Or, who does it look like?”
I take it all in. A small shabby Christmas tree is lit up on the opposite end as Chella. It’s decorated with white lights and ornaments made of old paper. There’s dozens of vintage suitcases stacked around the perimeter walls. Those little hand-cases women used to carry makeup and toiletries in back in the Fifties and Sixties. And there’s a fuzzy pink rug on the floor.
“It looks like… Rochelle,” I say, sadness filling my heart.
“It is Rochelle,” Chella says. “I found this place by accident last week. And even I saw it immediately. She came up here, I guess. Her little secret room. Her little private life. And I don’t think Bric knows about it.”
“No,” I say, crawling across the rug and sitting cross-legged in front of Chella. “He’d have thrown it all away if he did.”
“Yeah, that’s why I didn’t tell him. I figure all this stuff belongs to you. And look,” she says, crawling over to an old record player, the kind that comes in a case. “There’s music too.” She flips a switch and the turn table begins to spin. When she lifts the arm and places the needle on the 45 record, it starts to play Blue Christmas.
“Fuck,” I say.
Chella frowns. “Is this making you sad? I didn’t want to make you sad.”
“No,” I say, laying back on the rug and closing my eyes, two fingers massaging my temple to drive away the headache I feel coming. “I’m not sad.”
I’m devastated. I just don’t want it to show.
“I miss her so fucking much.”
Chella crawls over to me and lies down. She wraps an arm around my waist and places her head against my chest. “I’m sorry she left. And I wish I knew where she went. Because I’d tell you, Quin. I promise, I would.”
I slip an arm under her and start playing with her hair as I imagine all the nights Rochelle and I spent together listening to these old records. “Blue Christmas. That’s pretty much how I feel right now.”
“Open your eyes and look up,” Chella says.
I do. And on the ceiling is… a work of art. “Jesus,” I whisper. “What is all that?”
“Her,” Chella says. “She has a thing for dandelions.”
I get a stabbing pain in my heart. “I used to pick her dandelions every summer. Whole bouquets of them. When they were yellow, she’d put them in a vase.” And there on the ceiling is the vase filled with our weedy flowers. “And then in late summer I’d pick her wishes.” I smile at that thought. “Millions of wishes.”
Chella points to the ceiling. “Like that?”
It’s a self-portrait of Rochelle. She’s not a painter—as least, not as far as I knew—but it resembles her enough for me to recognize her. She’s blowing the wishes away.
“What was her wish, Quin? Did she ever tell you?”
“Her wish…” I say, thinking about it. It has been so long since we thought of our relationship in terms of the arrangement. “Her wish was to… belong to someone.”
We sigh together. “I think that might be my wish too,” Chella says.
“Really?” I ask, turning my head so I can see her in profile.
“Yeah. Bric and Smith have both asked me, but I don’t feel like telling them.”
“But you’ll tell me?”
She nods slowly. “I like telling you things. You tell me things, I tell you things. You’re the perfect Number Two, Quin. Easy to love, just like Smith said. And easy to laugh with too.”
“I like you too, Chella. And if I had my way, we’d stay in this arrangement forever.”
“But we won’t, will we?”
“No,” I say. “It never lasts.”
More sighing from both of us. “What’s all that writing?” I ask, pointing to the ceiling.
“It’s a song,” Chella says. “An old church song. I’ll Fly Away. Have you ever heard it?”
I shake my head. Sick. So sick for not knowing this about the girl I loved.
“I can play it,” Chella says. “She has the record.”
When I say nothing Chella gets up on her knees and crawls over to the record player. Anything is better than Blue Christmas. She takes that record off, plops a new record on, and then starts the music with a loud crackling noise.
Then she crawls back to me and lies back down. Points to the ceiling. “The words are up there. She wrote them all out.”
I follow along with the song, reading her words, dying inside.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I ask.
“No,” Chella says softly, leaning into me to kiss my cheek. “I don’t think so.”
“That song is about dying, Chella. Whatever this is, whatever reason she had for doing all this. She did it as a goodbye.”
Chella lets out a long exhale. “She left, so that is a goodbye. But I don’t think she left to kill herself, Quin.”
“The song is about death,” I say, too loud.
“I didn’t know her well, Quin. Not at all, hardly. But if there’s one thing I understood about Rochelle, it’s that she’s not a literal person. She’s an artist. A musician. Maybe a painter and a poet. But she didn’t write out those lyrics on the ceiling as a premonition of her suicide. She wrote as them as a memorial to your love.”
“So our love is dead.” That doesn’t help.
“Maybe it’s just a new beginning?” Chella asks. “Maybe she just wanted out of this arrangement? Did that ever occur to you?”
“Then why not tell me?” I ask, turning my head to look at Chella. “Why just… pick up and leave? She knew the rules.”
“Maybe I don’t know all the rules of Taking Turns, Quin. But it’s my understanding that once you walk out, there’s no turning back.”
I don’t answer.
“So maybe she left to end the game and give the two of you a chance to start over?”
“I’m supposed to look for her?” I want to throw up. “And I didn’t. She’s been gone for a month. She could be anywhere. She probably thinks—”
“She probably thinks it’s gonna take a while for you to sort it all out, Quin. So don’t jump to conclusions.”
The song ends and the needle plays endless static as it jumps the open space at the center of the record.
“I think this is over now,” I say.
“Yeah,” Chella says in a low, sad whisper. “I think so too.”
We lie there in the static of nothi
ngness for a little longer. And then Chella gets up and crawls over to the record player again, picking up the needle and turning it off. “Come on,” she says, tugging on my hand. “Let’s go to sleep.”
She climbs down from the attic and I follow a few second later. She’s changing out of her dress and into a t-shirt and shorts. I walk across the hall, into the closet I share with Bric and Smith, and slowly undress until I’m only wearing gray boxer briefs.
Chella is waiting for me in bed, holding the covers open so I can climb in. I flip off the light and then pull her close.
“Merry Christmas,” she says, holding on to me tight.
“Merry Christmas, Chella,” I say, hugging her back.
We sleep like that. Clutching each other like we don’t want to let go.
But we both know it’s time to let go.
Chapter Thirty-Three - Smith
“So tonight?” I’m trying my best to be cool with this, but I’m not cool with this.
“That’s what she told Quin.”
Chella made herself very clear the other night. She wants to experience the four of us together. The quad, as we like to call it. And I’ll admit, this was my aim as well when we first started the game.
But I’m not sure anymore.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Bric says. “And I don’t think it’s fair.”
“No,” I say. “You wouldn’t. Because you want this.”
“You want it too.”
“I did, now… now so much.”
Bric throws up his hands. We’re sitting in my bar at the Club. Quin and Chella are out… doing something fun today. “So back out, Smith. Call the game. End it. We won’t care if you do.”
I know he won’t. Quin, maybe. But Bric’s not a grudge holder. He’s not invested in very much, if you ask me. But who asked me?
“We’ll get over it. Find a new girl.”
“I don’t want a new girl, Bric. I’m out.”
He doesn’t bother throwing up his hands. He doesn’t even shrug. “So do it. Leave. But she wants it, Smith. And that’s the only thing that matters at this point. She wants it. So you better think about that. If you call the game she might be mad at you.”