Entangle

by Veronica Larsen

  “I guess I remember more of what happened when we were younger than you do.”

  Emily doesn’t miss a beat. “I remember plenty.”

  A quiet moment passes between us.

  My sister’s eyebrows pull together. “Lex, listen, mom isn’t going to change. She’s hardwired the way she is. She doesn’t have anyone she loves enough to change for, including herself. I choose to forgive her, not because she deserves it but because I’m not you. I can’t carry all that heavy shit around for the rest of my life.”

  I ignore her jab. “You keep engaging her, that’s why she keeps calling.”

  Emily throws her hands up in the air. “Who gives a fuck? She calls once in a blue moon, I answer and pretend to care. That’s all. I keep the conversation at surface level, she hangs up feeling like less of a piece of shit—and you know what? So do I. You should try it. It works wonders.” She sighs and rubs the space over her eyebrow. “I want my conscious clean even after she’s gone.”

  A shiver runs through me. It’s not that I haven’t considered this thought before. Many times I’ve wondered if I will regret the last words I ever spoke to my mother.

  I can’t stand you. You disgust me. I don’t want to hear from you. Ever again. Do you understand?

  Those are the words I said to her—no, screamed at her—three years ago. That was the last time I picked up her calls. My life was falling apart and the last thing I needed was to deal with her on top of it. She is always around to complicate things, never to help, always to damage.

  I chance a look at Emily and feel guilt crawling in my gut. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen her this upset. The list of things that get under her skin is short. My mother is near the top of that list, for both of us.

  Our food comes. We eat in a strained silence for a few minutes. Slowly, the dead air melts away into small talk. The energy between us is stiff, miles away from what it was when we first sat down, but we’re trying.

  Emily perks up for a moment, “Hey, some friends invited me out dancing tonight. You want to come?”

  “Dancing? It’s Thursday night.”

  The truth is, even the word dancing feels foreign on my tongue. I can tell by the way Emily’s eyes dart to the ceiling that she didn’t expect me to agree anyway. She’s always been the more social of the two of us. And that’s saying something, because Emily doesn’t like very many people to begin with.

  “Never mind. I forgot you have work in the morning. I can cancel.”

  “Cancel? No way. Go, have fun. I’ll just...find something else to do.”

  Like Leo.

  XIX

  Alexis

  It’s strange, I know, but I’ve always felt comfortable in hotels. There’s something about the union of the intimate and the anonymous. Your address is a number on a door today, but tomorrow—or soon after—you’re gone, never to return again. The same with your neighbors. There’s a rewarding sense of dereliction at not having to worry about what’s there when you come in or what’s left when you leave. The room is meant for your use and not for your care.

  I get to the room before Leo and decide to take a shower. I took one earlier but I feel strange sitting around waiting for him. My clothes drop to the floor and I slip into the stream of hot water.

  [I’ll be waiting.]

  That was his message as I walked out of the pizzeria with Jacob earlier today. When we talked about our plans for tonight, Leo didn’t mention seeing me. At first, this bothered me. Now I realize it doesn’t make sense that he would. He’s obviously skilled at this whole casual affair thing. I need more practice. It's obvious I do because I can’t shake the unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. I want to know if he wonders why I object to dates and go on a lunch date with someone else.

  Not knowing what’s going through Leo’s mind really bothers me. I tell myself I shouldn’t care, but telling myself and convincing myself are two different things.

  Does he think I’m fucking Jacob?

  Jesus. Why wouldn’t he think I’m going around fucking other men? I’m a woman asking him for casual sex, what else could he possibly think of me?

  I close my eyes and ignore the unpleasant feeling crawling all over my insides. I try to focus on the water pouring me. My mascara is waterproof but I know my eyeliner will disintegrate. I don’t care. It’s the only other makeup I wear and it ends up slipping off at the end of the night anyway.

  “Do you need help in there?”

  A yelp catches in my throat as my eyes spring open. Leo is standing outside of the shower, holding the curtain back with one hand.

  “Get in here,” I say. “Bring a condom.”

  I wipe the water from my eyes to see him better, but he is the one doing the viewing. He takes in every inch of my naked body as he pulls a string of aluminum wrappers from his pocket and undresses in front of me.

  Before I know it, his solid mass presses against me. The feel of his skin on mine again is like coming up for air. We kiss desperately, pretending we have only a few minutes left together instead of the entire night.

  “I missed your body,” he whispers as his hands run down my back and over my ass. The shower water is shielded by his body and I’m left feeling momentarily cold. That is, until warmth floods me as his lips explore my neck, nipping gently at me with his teeth. He kisses my collarbone while his hands run over my breasts, caressing them, teasing my nipples.

  He presses me to the shower wall and gets on his knees in front of me. I let out a sigh as his kisses trail downward, licking one of my nipples and running his tongue down between my breasts, only to nip at me again around my belly button.

  I take in a sharp breath as he licks me where it aches. The shower water is falling on us both again. I lean my head back and relish in the way his lips move over me, feeling the way the stubble on his chin brushes me in a deliciously rough way, sending shivers up and down my body. I forget everything. All I know is the thrill of the sensations he is giving me. All I can hear is the echoes of my moans bouncing off the shower walls.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  I feel my fingers grabbing the hair on the top of his head. I’m on the edge of orgasm when he stops abruptly. In smooth movements he gets to his feet, pulls me around, and plunges into me from behind. I’m taken completely off-guard by how incredibly hard he is.

  Holding my arms up over my head, he begins to thrust into me with such a fierceness that I’m certain for a wild minute that he is enraged with me, that he is punishing me for something.

  But I am in a state of elation, absorbed in the way he fills me with each thrust. All I can think of is how our wet bodies feel, clashing into each other. How incredibly attractive the noises he makes are. He sounds like he is driven wild by me and can’t get enough of my body, as though with each thrust he wants to explore even deeper inside of me.

  I imagine what our bodies must look like together as he is pounding into me so vigorously, his heavy breathing in my ear from behind. I feel the pleasure build to a boiling point and my body stiffens.

  “Say my name,” he commands in a low growl.

  I don’t say it. I scream it. Over and over again until I’m breathless and quivering from thrashing out in delight.

  XX

  Leo

  I come with her, grunting in her ear as I pump into her a few more times to the tune of her screaming out my name.

  It’s fucking glorious.

  We stumble out of the shower, laughing at nothing in particular as though drunk and stupid. Then she does something that takes me off-guard. She grabs a large towel and wraps it around me before she even pulls one over herself. It’s a small gesture and I’m not sure why it surprises me, but it does. I rip the second towel from her hand and swoop her up into my arms.

  “Leo!” she gasps, but she lets me carry her, naked, into the room and onto the bed. I rip off my towel and throw it aside to reveal my new erection.

  “I’ll be back,” I say, pointing at her as she lays
back on the bed and watches me walk away. “Don’t move.”

  I go into the bathroom and grab the rest of the condoms. When I get back she is half hanging off the bed, her head toward the floor; her back curves against the edge of the mattress and her hips tilt upward as she touches herself. Her eyes are closed and she is moaning out softly.

  Fuck. However long her dry spell was before, it was too damn long. The mere days we spent not fucking were too long. She is a sexual creature, through and through. I will never again waste a single opportunity to be inside of her.

  I climb on the bed, seeing the way she rubs her clit with her wrist as her fingers slide in and out of her. I come up between her legs and she instantly pulls her hand aside so I can slide myself inside. I feel her warmth even through the condom. Her whole body reacts to me, coiling and releasing like a lashing rope. I anchor her thighs onto each of my hands and I pull in and out of her slowly. Her body is still halfway on the floor. I peer down and notice that she is staring up at me. The look in her eyes is one I recognize: her inhibitions have melted away. She is gleaming at me now with wild adulation, like I am a deity sent here for the sole purpose of pleasing her.

  She would do anything I asked her to in this moment. She knows it. I know it.

  Her beautiful breasts are heaving as she pants out, “Come on, faster.”

  I keep my thrusts slow and steady, seeing the anguish build in her as her whole body pleads to be fucked hard.

  “I don’t want you fucking anyone else,” I say to her as I slide inward again.

  “Okay. Come on,” she says dismissively, her eyes fluttering in a half blink as I begin to pull out of her again.

  She tilts her hips into me to force the speed of the next thrust but I grab her hips to keep them steady.

  “I’m not fucking anyone else,” she groans.

  “I’m not either. But I don’t just mean right now, I mean until we’re done. I don’t share.”

  “Okay, fuck me,” she moans, her hips fighting my grip.

  “Say it, first. You don’t fuck anyone else.”

  “I don’t fuck anyone else.”

  “You’re mine until we agree otherwise.”

  “I’m yours.”

  I begin to slam into her recklessly, so roughly that I cast my eyes toward her to make sure I’m not hurting her. But she is enjoying every second of it, screaming out in delight even as the dangerously loud pounding sounds echo around us.

  I know she’s utterly loss in the pleasure when she begins moaning out dirty things I would never expect to hear coming out of that beautiful and poised mouth.

  Her breasts are heaving around and the sight of it is enough for me to come. But I don’t. I will myself to wait for her. When I feel her tightening around my shaft and convulsing into disordered panting, I know she’s tipping over the edge. I release myself, feeling the pure ecstasy plummet through my veins.

  Afterward, she doesn’t seem to think twice about laying with me in bed, not resisting the way she did our first night together. I can tell she feels more comfortable with the idea now. She knows how well we can turn on our professionalism for work. What happens in bed tonight, and all the nights to come, doesn’t have to change anything that happens out there in the real world.

  “How do you feel?” I ask into the top of her head, worried I might have been too rough with her.

  “I feel like I was fucked pretty hard.”

  “Sounds about right,” I say, taking in a lungful of her hair before I realize what I’m doing.

  “My pussy hurts.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I reach a hand down between her legs and just lay it there, shielding it.

  “Don’t be. I enjoyed it.”

  She turns around to her side and watches me.

  “Tell me something,” she says.

  I feel the intensity of her green eyes before I even meet them. Every time I notice a new strand of color. Strands of yellow and dark blue weave between the green hues.

  “What kind of something?”

  She shrugs coolly and I notice how relaxed she seems.

  “I don’t know. Whatever you want.”

  “Okay.” I look away from her again so I can think for a few seconds. I’m not even sure what I’m going to say until I hear it coming out of my lips. “I almost got kicked out of school in the eighth grade. I was running a gambling ring.”

  “A middle school gambling ring? What—were you guys trading candy pops and chocolate bars?”

  I chuckle. “Man, I wish we were that simple. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars here. We weren’t really kids. See, this was a private school. Elite. Kids with filthy-rich parents and allowances that were more than most people’s salaries. Money buys you a lot of shit but it can’t buy your innocence back.”

  “Prep school, huh?” She considers me for a moment. “So that’s where all that swag comes from. You come from money.”

  I raise an eyebrow at the dismissive way she says that. I bring my hand between her legs again but this time I hook it. She groans out, “Ahh! Ouch.”

  “What about you?” I ask. “I bet you were the perfect pupil and never got into trouble.”

  “Now hang on,” she cuts in. “Why didn’t you get kicked out?”

  I turn my gaze to the ceiling again.

  “My father is the school’s biggest benefactor. He smoothed out the whole ordeal and got everyone their money back and then some.”

  “Ah, so you felt invincible…”

  “Quite the opposite, actually. I felt defeated. I hated that school. It was all pretenses and status, fake smiles and backstabbing. The type of shit that went down in there is the stuff soap operas are made of. You wouldn’t even believe what these kids were up to. Plus, I felt weighed down by my family’s name being on nearly everything. At the time, I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there.”

  “Trying to get out from under Daddy’s thumb.”

  Somehow those words seem to squirm in the pit of my stomach. “Something like that. My dad’s a good guy, but he’s really overwhelming and tries to control everything in his life, including his children. I guess that’s how he got so successful.”

  She rolls her eyes and it’s somehow the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen a woman do outside of sex.

  “Poor you. Overwhelmed by privilege and money.”

  I go to grab her between the legs again but she shifts out of the way, laughing.

  She props herself back on her elbow to see me and says, “No, wait. This is interesting to me because I grew up poor. I didn’t have anything and it lit a fire under my ass. I worked my butt off in school and got a full ride through college. Graduated top of my class. I came from nothing and I wanted everything. But you...you grew up with everything and wanted none of it.” She shakes her head at me, her eyes ruminating.

  “I know it sounds stupid.”

  “It is. It’s completely idiotic.”

  Her tone is serious and matter of fact.

  I pull my arms back behind my head and let out a breath.

  “It’s hard to explain. My brother and sister never seemed to have a problem with it, but all of that money was suffocating to me.”

  “You have a brother...A sister?”

  “Yeah. My sister, Sarah, is the baby; she’s twenty. My brother William is twenty-nine, two years younger than me." I pause. "Your sister seems like a firecracker when I met her in the office.”

  “She is.” Nodding quickly, she shifts the conversation back to me again. “What’s your sister like?”

  I notice an eagerness in her eyes, waiting for me to open a door to a room she’s been itching to explore.

  “My sister is simple. And by simple, I mean simple minded. She likes nice things and people with nice things. Her and I had an interest for traveling, but never to the same places. She was only interested in places like Paris or London, places with the prospect of glitz. But me? I wanted to see the world. The real world. The grit, the
dirt. I wanted to know what was outside of the perfect little bubble our parents created for us. My brother wasn’t much for traveling. He’s always been a loner and a book worm; he would rather spend his summers locked in his room doing who knows what. Tell me more about your sister.”

  “She’s...the opposite of me in so many ways.”

  I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. Instead, she asks, “You mentioned before you’ve been to South Africa?”

  “When I turned sixteen, I signed up for a study abroad there.”

  She raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Yeah, my parent’s had no clue what South Africa would be like so, naturally, they expected the worst. Told me I couldn’t go. Turns out, they only approve travels to locations they deemed plush and safe. But after they talked to the family I was supposed to be living with they finally caved and agreed to let me go. No coincidence that my uncle also decided, on a whim, that he wanted to visit South Africa. Right at the same time.”

  “How was it?”

  “I was only there for a month. The family I lived with were a white couple with two young children, working class people. They didn’t have much but they offered me everything. The communities were all over the place, wealthy areas and dirt-poor areas. Not to mention, there was an obvious racial divide.”

  “So you went to school there for a month?”

  “Yes. My parents were under the impression I would be going to a private school. Because that’s what I told them. But, really, I went to a public school. It was jarring. The bubble I had been living in back in Texas just popped. The school was dirty, disordered, not enough materials to even teach the students adequately. But I liked that I was no one there. Even though I didn’t always get along with the other kids. I felt real for the first time, I wasn’t in some squeaky-clean prep school with my father’s name hanging over the library. I was just a regular ol’ white kid.”

  She shakes her head. “Stop it. You have no idea how ungrateful you sound.”

  “No, I’m not ungrateful. I swear. I know how lucky I am to have grown up like that. It’s just…” I trail off. “I don’t know. Seeing the contrast of how little the family I lived with had—not to mention how much worse off most of the locals were—made my family’s money feel disgusting. Even more disgusting considering I didn’t even earn it. It fell on my lap the moment I was born. Okay—enough about me. Now it’s your turn to tell me something about you.”