by Gabi Moore
“Nevermind, the damage is done now!” she said, gesturing to the tattoo, as though it and my aunt’s ex-toy-boy were intimately connected and if she ogled the thing hard enough, it might go away. In a sense, they were intimately connected. But I didn’t like thinking about that. And they certainly didn’t have to know.
I kept lots of secrets these days, some more happily than others.
“It’s devil’s markings first, then drinking and drugs, and next thing you know she’ll be having you-know-what, mark my words.”
I angrily disentangled myself and pulled my shirt down. “You know, you could try not talking about me as though I’m not even here,” I said.
My mother gave me that furious look she had been giving me a lot these last few months. I could see her thinking, stewing up something nasty to say, but the standard “not under my roof” spiel wasn’t working as well since I had moved out months ago. In just a few months, I would be a fully qualified dental technician, so she got what she wanted, in some ways.
“Reverend Peters says that people can get addicted to tattoos you know,” she started again, trying a new angle. “You never get just one, you have to keep going and going until you look like a biker or something.”
I went to grab my bag and put my jacket on. “Mom, Reverend Peters is 100% correct. This is my third tattoo. But don’t worry, the others are very well hidden,” I said, and let myself out. I closed the door quietly, and I could only hear the faint, shocked laughter of my aunt as I walked down the driveway and to my car.
Chapter Twelve
It is true. You can get addicted to tattoos. But that’s not all. You can get addicted to all sorts of things. To porn or drugs. To food. To the absence of something. To feelings. To ideas. And to people.
“Close the door, it’s noisy out there,” he said.
I shut it, sealing us again in the dusky cave I had grown so familiar with recently. He was hunched over something, but I couldn’t make out much in the dim light.
“Open the curtains at least! You’re going to ruin your eyes,” I said. Turns out Jared had tons of secrets, too.
He was studying part time, for one. He had mountains of books hidden all over his apartment. It was third year physics, and his maths notebooks and heavy textbooks seemed written in a cryptic language; his assignments were all submitted secretly, too, without me ever seeing him doing it. Even the good grades he received were hidden for some reason, and he studied for exams in the back of cars and snapped the books closed when anyone came to look.
And he did this now, as though I had discovered him doing something truly embarrassing. Of all the things I had let this boy do to me in the last year, and me him, I had to smile a little that he could still be bashful around me. He shone a boyish smile in my direction and squirrelled the books away.
We sat staring at one another for a while, sizing up how things would play out this evening.
His eyes dropped to quickly take in the shirt I was wearing, the tight jeans. I saw a flicker of recognition in his naughty eyes, and returned my own to him. Fine. It was settled then.
“My mama kicked me out of the house today,” I said with an over-the-top pout. I dropped my backpack to the floor, looking like someone had stolen my candy. I twirled a strand of hair between my fingers.
He smiled that gorgeous sideways smile, just the same one he did when I first met him and couldn’t decide if I wanted to smack him or fuck his brains out. He knitted his fingers together and sat back in his seat like a bad guy in the club scene in a movie.
“Oh? Did she now? And why’s that, little girl?” he said, mocking me.
I sidled up to him a little, still pouting, deliberately avoiding his eyes.
“Oh, nothing. I’ve just been a little naughty.”
He grinned savagely, something playful yet dangerous in the way his hands rested on his knees, as though he was coiled up and ready to bite. I sidled a little closer.
“This is a very dangerous place. You were stupid to come here.” The smile was gone, and in its place came something more sinister. I loved this part. The mood dropped, clicked into a different gear. I shut my eyes and breathed in deeply and out again, just as he had taught me.
“Oh, I’m sorry mister, I’ll just be going then…” I said, picking up my bag and making as to leave out the same door. He stood up quickly, pinning me in my place with steely eyes. I loved how easily he could turn from sweet boy to …whatever this was. I didn’t know. Neither did he. And so we kept doing this over and over again to understand it.
“Drop your bag,” he barked, and I did.
He walked up slowly to me, menacingly, a showy swagger in his step that was seemingly put there to intimidate me. Little flutters erupted in the pit of my stomach. I said nothing; lowered my eyes. He brushed past me and softly closed the door, his hand on mine.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
I gulped. “But, I’m sorry to bother you, I really should just go now sir…”
He had caged me in with his arm, like the jock bully in an 80s High School series, laying claim to the innocent girl who had nothing but some books held to her chest for protection. I couldn’t say anymore. He watched me carefully, amused by my panicked breathing. I was wearing dark jeans and a torn black shirt, but in this moment, it was actually a chaste uniform, a blouse in virginal white and little skirt, and he could see that, too.
He dragged his eyes down the length of my trembling body and then back up again, then extended one finger to touch my collarbone, so gently as though he’d break me by accident. He hooked a dainty gold chain in his finger and lifted it to his face to examine it. A modest gold cross dangled nervously.
“A good girl…” he said, part question, part accusation.
I turned my head to the side, squirming away from his face, from the strong smell of his cologne. His abs were no more than an inch from my body. I was wet already, even though we had played this game so, so many times before. The answer to this half question was no, I wasn’t a good girl, over and over …but we were both compelled to keep asking the question.
He let the cross fall, then with the same finger traced a line along my jaw, grazing against my lips.
“Well you won’t be a good girl for very much longer…” he said and viciously grabbed a clump of my hair, forcing my head to yank sideways. Trapped like this, he set in for a greedy kiss, forcing his tongue deep into my mouth. He tasted so sweet, so wrong; I tried to shove him off me, a little giddy.
His hand went to my throat and slammed me hard against the door. My body went obediently limp, as his face scanned mine. His eyes changed briefly, becoming soft for a second, becoming that same goofy boy who was no more than a few years older than me. He looked into my eyes, giving me split second to use the magic word we had, to tell him that this was too much, that he was hurting me.
I tightened my mouth, stared defiantly at him and said nothing.
All at once he dragged me away from the door and flung me across the kitchen, and I went skidding to catch my balance on the other side of the room. He regarded me with hard eyes.
“Do you know what boys like me do to girls like you?”
I started to cry. Real, hot drops were rolling down my cheeks as I stood there, glee tainted with just a little fear, loving how easy it was to go so far with him. Something came over me in times like this. I had let go, that first night on the futon, and I had been letting go ever since. And now I was standing here, sobbing like a lost lamb, and he never skipped a beat, never wavered. He was going to play with me, and follow, no matter how dark I wanted to go.
What happened next was a blur to me; he tore my shirt off and yanked my jeans down, scratching my skin in the process. Eyes still bleary with tears, he pinned me against the kitchen counter, both hands in fistfuls of my hair. Steadying my hands on the counter, he grabbed my flesh and held me down.
I was so turned on I stopped differentiating between his body and mine, between pain and pleasure, b
etween right and wrong. Under a shower of filthy words, he poured a long, hard stream of dominating energy into my body, and I, delirious and long gone into my own world, absorbed every thrust happily.
After he came, it took the hugest effort to pull his engorged cock from me, so hot and grasping my body was around him, so tightly had we knotted together. From behind, he wrapped his arms round my waist and nibbled my shoulder, as though to wake me and signal the end of our game. I came to, my body still ringing and faint prickles of pain still echoing on my scalp, and on the places on my upper thigh where he had clawed at me, desperate to jam even deeper into my body.
“Dirty little slut,” he said.
My new tattoo eyed him dispassionately. Yes, I was a dirty little slut, and it was all because of him. I hoisted my jeans back on and gave him a long, obscene kiss. He was a delicious kisser, and always had been. I was pleasantly, utterly obliterated, and lay myself down on the futon again, stretching my arms to find his hidden stash under the mattress.
He looked uneasy.
“You’re just going to go straight to …that?” he said, standing naked in the kitchen.
I looked at him. Well, what did he want?
He shook his head and came to sit beside me. His boyish charm was back in full force on his face, no trace of the animal that was here in this kitchen just a moment ago.
“I think that was a little too far, even for me,” he said eventually. His sudden change in tone felt like an insult.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He was meant to be my co-rebel, my partner in crime, not another person telling me what I should and shouldn’t do.
“Nothing. Just maybe we should calm down a little with that kind of stuff?”
For all the time we had been “seeing” each other, all the stolen kisses and secret meetings, I had in the back of my mind that $641 I had tucked away in my backpack. It seemed a lifetime ago to me now; how different I was then. He had never asked for it after that first night, and I had never offered it, and we had marched on with a nasty set of assumptions brewing between us, the money being a sore point – all the wrong kinds of sore, too.
“Why? You enjoyed it,” I said, more than a little hurt. “Who are you to judge me anyway?”
His face tightened. “Who am I? I don’t know, Mel, who am I?”
I smiled nervously, trying to lighten the tension that was growing in the room.
“Who are you? Well you’re my sexy boy toy, aren’t you? You’re my bad boy who’s going to teach me a lesson and…” I pouted playfully and tried on the same voice I had earlier, but he drew back and tightened his face further.
“What the fuck, Mel? Can you just cut that out? I’m sick of all of that. I’m not just a piece of meat you know.”
The spell was broken. My thighs were still sticky and my hair was still tousled, but he was ruining the mood, and fast. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. I like to have things planned out, even now, and he had stopped playing his part. He was supposed to be my handsome devil come to lure me away from righteousness, and defile me, and punish my innocence…
I drew back and looked at him, trying to think of something to say to hurt him. He was supposed to be on my side.
“You’re not a piece of meat? Well, tell me honestly then, are you still seeing them?” We had fought about this last time, too. He had sworn to stop seeing his “sugar mommies” but kept at it anyway. He had kept it all secret, the gifts, the short trips. Yet he wanted to judge me? I was a fucked up girl with issues, fine, but what was he?
He looked hurt and hung his head, saying nothing.
“Oh my god …you are still seeing them!” I said, expecting him to jump in and deny it. I stood up, face burning.
“So you’ll do anything for them, as long as there’s cash involved, but I can go to hell? Is that right?”
He said nothing, and I wished with all my heart he would look at me. I threw on my shirt and left, banging the door behind me. I had planned all of this out. And this was not the way it was supposed to go.
Chapter Thirteen
The trouble with losing your virginity is that you can only do it once. The trouble with fantasies is that they’re not real. And the trouble with bad boys is that they’re …well, they’re bad.
I went to my dorm room that evening and secretly had to admit to myself that things just weren’t right. That maybe it was me who was the bad guy in this story. That first night on the futon, Jared wasn’t a real person to me, I’ll admit it. He was my ticket out of my “issues”, out of my stuffy ideas abut sex and my unhealthy home life and my toxic, religious upbringing. He was a catalyst, the same one that had released my aunt from of her crazy red chrysalis and now had worked on me, sparking some fierce repressed rebellion in me and letting loose a new beast entirely.
That night, the blood of something old and primal smeared on my belly like a dangerous idea, I had changed. Jared has the eerie talent of being able to reach deep into people and pull out their real desires, pull away their layers and reveal what’s really underneath. He was a “toy boy”, sure, but he was also something like a sexual magician, his irrepressible energy and ridiculous abs conjuring ordinary people into caricatures of themselves.
How could I deny him his talent? How could I be jealous? My aunt had move don fairly quickly and was happy now, so where was the harm? He had been taking money from wealthy, burnt out women for years, and what he gave them went far, far deeper than a quick fuck in their laundry rooms before their husbands came home. It was an unspoken understanding between us. We were an unlikely pair, I knew it, but he tolerated my warped sexuality and I tolerated his …line of work.
Jared had fucked me so hard he seemed to have melted melt my brain – and I was left now with a strange new imprint, a permanent glitch in me that compelled me to live out the same scene again and again. I was stuck as the naughty virgin asking for it, and I couldn’t get out. And he was stuck being my bad boy and I would rather he squeeze my throat than hold my hand.
Now I was a little older, and living alone where my mother would never catch me in the act, and I was running out of space to put new tattoos, and worse, running out of people who cared.
The trouble with having wild fantasies like mine is that sometimes, they come true.
Chapter Fourteen
Jared and I didn’t see each other for another year at least.
In hindsight, we were both pretty immature. My aunt had moved to Costa Rica to give my mom something to stress about. Perhaps she’ll get married there to some guy, who knows. We adopted Buttons, who got fat. I finished my degree, although just barely, and, my old good girl image well and truly fouled, I began to relax a little.
I thought of Jared often, how we were ridiculous opposites of each other, how all that weirdness that had happened in his dark little apartment was like the meeting of matter and antimatter, cat and dog, good girl and bad boy.
But opposites sometimes cancel each other out. We had seen to the end of that game and didn’t know what more to do with each other, and so we drifted, I guess. I wondered whether wealthy, sexually frustrated women were still paying his secret way through college, or whether he still kept that same little stash under his futon, like he always did. I went to therapy for the beginnings of an eating disorder. My mother and I threw plates on the floor and I told her I was never going back to church. Mostly, life moved on.
Of course, by now, you can guess that that wasn’t quite the whole story, and that him and I had unfinished business to tend to. That business resolved itself one rainy afternoon, when I bumped into him outside a supermarket. It was unmistakable - I could recognize his body, his gait, anywhere.
“Mel? Oh my god is that really you?”
I spun round to look square into his face, still as youthful as ever, only with a quieter knowing sparkle in it instead of the naughtiness I had remembered. He was different somehow, but only a little. He still had that same audacity that comes with wearing loun
gewear in public, that cockiness that comes from an effortlessly buff body, that cheeky sideways grin.
Without thinking, I flung my arms around him and gave him a big, broad hug. He was surprised, even laughed a little. It felt easier, so much easier, to just touch him and be close to him than to say words, which I had none of just at that particular moment. He laughed again at me struggling to find something to say, and so I leant in and hugged him again, this time laughing too.
He had finished his degree, he told me, and had recently landed a job he had been interviewing heavily for the past few months. Things were looking up for him. He was going to move, next month, to a new city, and start a new life there. He seemed so happy.
“It was good luck that I bumped into you then!” I said, and we both went a little sad.
He had moved out of his dingy apartment, and, naturally, had long parted with that ugly black futon, the altar on which I had sacrificed all my weird sexual hang-ups. Over and over again. We chatted, and then, just like dusting the cobwebs off an old path we had cut a long time ago, I found myself all at once sitting with him at his place, which he proudly showed off. His decorating skills had certainly improved.
And he was still cute. Damn cute. I remembered the last time we saw each other, the nasty words. I had often felt pangs of guilt whenever I thought how I must have hurt him, how I judged him for letting others use him – all the while using him myself. How after everything, he wasn’t that much older than me, it had just felt like it. Caught up in my own childish drama, I didn’t notice his own quiet ambitions, how lonely he must have felt, how harsh my judgment must have seemed.
He opened a little carved cupboard beside him and extracted a small, familiar box, which he waggled my direction. The old stash.
“What do you say, for old time’s sake?” he said, pulling out a lighter, and some papers.