by Kayti McGee
Saccharine bullshit. An accident of time and space that happens to work out for some people. Not for me.
Without warning I slide out of her and hold her hips in place. Her body starts wriggling under my hands but she knows better than to turn around again.
“What’s going on?” she asks. She tries maneuvering her hips back towards me but I keep her at a distance and then smack her ass and imagine the vibrations making their way up to her clit. I can tell she likes it from the noise she makes, so I do it again. I slip my arm around her waist, bring my fingers to her bud and roll it between my fingertips. This place was such a mystery, but now I know it better than any man. She starts to tremble already but still her hips reach back towards my dick.
“I want you inside of me,” she says. I grab a fistful of her hair and slowly bring her ear to my lips.
“First I’ll make you come and then I’m going to have my way with you. If you’re good I’ll come in your mouth.” I know I’m being mean and I don’t care. I feel mean. I feel broken, and I want her to feel broken too, even if she doesn’t understand why.
With one hand still thumbing her clit I slip two fingers inside her but I can hardly do anything before she starts bucking against my hand, going after her own pleasure. My eyes widen as I take in her body moving with such certainty and confidence.
I want her to go after what she wants and I keep my hands steady as she rocks faster and finally explodes on my fingers. I thought I might come just from watching her and I can barely wait for her to finish before I’ve slipped into her again, my thumbs gripping into those dimples. Her going after her pleasure gave me the green light to chase after mine. I worry I might split her in two but her body continues to take more of me.
Our bodies are in such full propulsion that soon I feel like I’m flying behind her, one hand resting on her low back and the other around her thigh. I want her to feel another kind of orgasm and so the next time I drive deep I hold myself there and start rocking, looking for that spot deep inside her so that she can come apart again.
Before I even can hear her voice express it I feel the drumming of her pulse against my dick, her walls contracting around me. I won’t last much longer. I rock even deeper and just as she starts to peak I have to pull out. I flip her around and grab for her head but she’s ready to meet me, wrapping her arms around my waist and taking me into her mouth. I hold onto her head as she slides her mouth up and down and I’m coming in long spurts that disappear down her throat.
I move away from her and bring myself back down between her legs, because the last thing I want is to interrupt her in the middle of coming. I lick her in long stokes and then suck that sweet clit. If all I have to offer her is orgasms I’ll give her a hundred and then a hundred more, so that any time she has one with anyone else, she’ll think of me.
She’ll want me then.
Chapter Sixteen
Marlee
It’s like I’m living the life I’ve always dreamed of even though I’m so busy there’s no room for dreaming. I didn’t know it was possible to live off sex instead of sleep but I’m suddenly the poster child for that.
After a quick lesson on morning sex with Jake, I grab an apple and head out the door, my duffle bag slung over my shoulder. Mornings in LA are my favorite, when the sun is high but the heat hasn’t peaked yet. There’s a light breeze in the branches of the lemon trees near Jake’s pool. I’m at peace until I get in the car, and WAZE is making me take a left turn on an impossibly busy street and I’m not sure if I’ll make it to my voice lesson in time, which means being late to every appointment after that.
I can see why Richard would want the arrangement he’s setting up with me. How else would you have time to establish a relationship that would benefit everyone involved with a schedule like this?
Today is one of those days where there’s no way to get where I need to on time but my voice coach, Marie, is forgiving.
“Please don’t get yourself worked up. I see how hard you’re working. I left my family, my home once too, hoping to set up a life for myself in this town,” she says today, like she does every time as she runs some scales.
“You’re not the latest. Believe me, this cast is some of the most ragtag diamonds in the rough I’ve ever met. But that’s what Richard loves. Polishing up what has potential. You can see it in his love life too, dating all these young things and then turning them into stars. He’s an eccentric but he really does like to stick with his performers for the long haul. Let me hear you hit this third octave today.”
I leave thinking of Richard polishing me into something unnatural and imagine myself covered in carbon as I drive to rehearsal. It takes almost an hour in lunchtime traffic to get downtown and I imagine myself getting more and more smudged. Is it polishing when, instead of uncovering who I am, he’s molding me into who he wants me to be?
And what if it doesn’t work? What if Richard can’t do anything with me? If I never hit that octave, if I stumble over my lines, if I can’t get wet for him? Could I be giving up everything just to have it all fail?
But I can’t think about that, I have to keep my head centered, especially since we are reading through episode one.
I don’t normally see any of my cast members as ragtag or diamonds in the rough like my voice coach said, but when I walk into the studio today I can kind of see it. Everyone has some experience, a small part in a theater piece in New York or a dancer in a music video or on tour but no breakthrough piece, no one here is a name. But every moment I spend with them helps me see how they could be.
I haven’t gotten close to anyone yet because I’ve been so busy just working hard in rehearsal and then running home to have time with Jake but I’m starting to feel warmly toward them. Jaya, my lead, fellow Missourian, and closest thing to a friend on the show, sees me coming in late and grabs my arm so I don’t have to walk all the way in alone.
“Don’t worry, I covered for you. Said you were here and just having to take care of some things in the bathroom.”
“Great, thanks, Jaya. Now they’ll all think I have the runs or something.”
“All girls take forever in the bathroom. Who knows and who cares what they’ll think, but they won’t realize you’re late. Again.” Her hair is braided across her head like the character’s hair will be and it makes me wonder if I should have pulled my hair up in a bun like in the script.
“Should I pull my hair up?” I ask, feeling like I’m in high school again, and its hard not to feel similar, wanting to fit into this world. I’m unrehearsed and underprepared, and even though none of them are big yet, they all have just enough experience to pass as professionals. She gazes at me with her warm brown eyes and my anxieties dissipate.
“Hah! They’re going to change your character’s hair based on how you already look. Trust me, I’ve heard the director talking with the stylists about how they want to use your natural body and wave. You got that sex hair. I doubt they’ll change mine because it’s so thick it pretty much only does the one thing. Besides, I live with a Pixtagram beauty queen who helps me do that method-style of preparing. I get to try living the part whenever she’s around.”
And when Jaya reads her part I can really experience how her preparation is working. Her body animates with her voice and I forget that I’m even looking at Jaya but feel certain I’m looking at the character Priya Run. I try bringing my body into it too, and I can’t help but enjoy forgetting who Marlee Reed is so that I can become Melissa Carole.
I think about my character’s body when I’m with my physical trainer after rehearsal. Partly he’s prepping me for the dances but I know it’s because of the costumes that Melissa has to wear, the way her stomach needs to be toned and how her shoulders need to be sculpted. I make it through all the reps by thinking of Jake seeing me toned and sculpted, but I know that this isn’t about him or my body but the character, the show.
I think about this when I meet with a movement coach on how to hold myself less
like a dancer and more like the regular girl she’s supposed to be, mastering Melissa’s walk to cover up my natural turnout.
It’s weird to be hiding my dance background to play a girl who dances on the show, but I’m quickly learning that everything in show business is layers on layers of concealer.
Every part of me is sore, every muscle from my feet to my brain is in use. And it feels amazing. But my favorite soreness is what I carry around each day from Jake. This reminder of him that I carry between my legs all day long and then get to refresh at night. Sometimes we are both so tired it’s hard to work up the energy to have sex, but we do it anyway.
It feels like we are reclaiming each other at the end or beginning of each day. More and more, I’m the one who inmates it.
I can feel that there’s something waning in his attention. It’s nothing I could bring up exactly, but I see in the everyday little things. Like how we don’t make jokes over coffee in the morning anymore. How he doesn’t bring home bottles of pink shit just to surprise me for no reason. I feel the distance growing. And I know he is purposefully pulling away.
Sometimes at night we sit together in our living room both of us scrolling on our phones scheduling things and answering emails. I know that there was a big turn with his album and he’s more driven than I’ve seen him since I moved here but I know hardly anything about it. Before, if he would try to explain and I wouldn’t understand, he’d sit down at the piano, or pull one of the million guitars in every room out and show me.
Now, when I ask how the studio was, I get a brush-off.
And he doesn’t even ask about how my rehearsals are going anymore. If he did, I’d tell him I’m freaking out. There’s so much to keep up with. It feels like every success (the elusive third octave!) is countered by a fail (my accent, my turnout, the godawful ab-centric diet I am never going to stick to). Every time I sneak in an extra dance class or a cast choreography session I know its taking time away from him, time we could be rebuilding the friendship, but I can’t stop because what if I screw something else up?
My days revolve around Richard Thurgood. Preparing for his show, preparing for his bed. There’s so little left for Marlee in his orbit, but maybe that’s a good thing. If I don’t have time to breathe, I don’t have time to worry about what happens next.
On Sunday, I have a day off for the first time in two weeks. It’s a sign of how stressed I am that my first order of business is to rehearse anyways.
I move the couch out of the way in the living room and practice this dance sequence that I’m having trouble with. It isn’t the steps that throw me, it’s mouthing the right words, it’s remembering to look at the right cast members. I have to turn this sequence into something as automatic as the five ballet positions if I’m going to be able to nail the rest.
It doesn’t help that I’m distracted. Ever since we started the lessons, Jake hasn’t been shy about ogling me but today he didn’t stop to watch me practice. He didn’t even look in my direction.
I know that eventually we will fall into a lesson, as we always do, but honestly I feel too tender to really successfully complete anything. I need sun and a lesson that doesn’t involve the bedroom. Or a counter. Or the floor or the staircase or the washing machine.
I already have A’s in all of those.
When I knock on the door to his room he puts down his guitar and gives me the mischievous smile that always precedes every lesson. I feel the familiar thrill in my core, even as I hate that sex is about the only way we connect these days.
“Working on something new?” I ask
“Just fine-tuning what I’m working on. As far as what you’re working on, I have some ideas for today.”
“Actually,” I hope this doesn’t alienate him even more, “I was hoping you could give me some advice on interviews. I’ve gotten a couple of requests since they finally set a release date for what we’re filming. Come to the pool with me. Interview me. I don’t know how to do that.”
I feel shy, worried, as I ask for this but his face falls somewhere between disappointment and relief. His shoulders soften and it may be the most real look I’ve seen him give me in days.
“That sounds great,” he says. “I mean, I would rally if you wanted to do more but my body could use a recuperation day.”
“You and me both, buddy.” We both cringe a little when I call him buddy, but it’s too late.
Outside, the heat is dense but there is a warm breeze blowing that feels comforting on my skin as I take off my robe. I put on my most modest one piece to help keep me on track but no one said I can’t check out each his body. It’s nice to see his strong chest and how his torso v’s down to his hips, the muscle folds at his hip bones, his golden skin, without being in the act of anything.
That doesn’t stop us from touching each other though. It’s like by seeing each other’s bodies we are reminded of this bond that we have. I run my hands across his chest and feel his hands at my low back which are starting to feel incredibly familiar. I can feel him getting hard and I gently pull away, lay out on the lounge chair, and pat the one beside me. Now that I’m taking a moment I realize I’m actually really nervous about the interviews. I’m so damn insecure about everything I’m doing lately, except maybe the sex with him.
“I’ll ask you some questions that they will typically ask you and the idea is to get your answers down.”
“I’m ready,” I say, resting my hands behind my head. It’s been awhile since we just talked, and I’m enjoying the sound of his voice.
“Okay, Marlee Reed, thanks for being here with me today. I hear you are from Bumblefuck, Midwest. How does a woman with a background like yours end up in LA?”
“Well, I left the greatest city in America, Kansas City, not the Kansas side but the Missouri, and it’s a decision I still really struggle with. But after my fiancé Johnathan turned out to be gay and we broke up it was like my whole plan suddenly dissolved so I decided—”
Jake makes a buzzer sound.
“Okay, whoa, stop. You are giving way too much with one question. Before you know it you’ll be telling them about hearing your parents have sex down the hall.”
“But I did and it was so traumatizing!” He knows this!
“I don’t need to know that,” he says, “and these interviewers especially don’t. There’s an art to deflection and to spin. Answer the bare minimum of the question but you don’t need to bring your emotion all the way into it. Something more like,” Jake pauses and lets his voice go into a falsetto.
“Growing up outside of the industry gave me a solid foundation but at some point I had to listen to the call to follow my dreams.”
“It’s so vague.” I’m not good at vague. I’m good at ramble.
“And that’s good. Maybe someday when you’re a star and Diane Sawyer wants an interview you can decide if there’s a little more of the story you want to tell but until then you want to keep them interested and intrigued. Mentioning your fiancé isn’t a bad idea. But rather than outing him, say something like my fiancé and I knew our paths were diverging. He needed to follow his dreams and I needed to follow mine. People will eat that shit up.”
“But I’m not good at lying, Jake. And I’m not sure what’s not to tell. I’m kind of an open book.” He grips onto my shoulder. Looks deeply into my eyes.
“I love that about you.” I feel startled but he keeps going. “But you get to decide how much of the book people get to see. You need to keep something for yourself. This business will take everything from you otherwise.”
I feel a wave of nervousness wash over me and it feels like I might cry. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not good at this. At any of it. I hide my eyes because I don’t want him to see my thousandth round of tears, but makes another loud buzzer sound that makes me laugh.
“Too much emotion, too soon in the interview. Okay, next question. When did you first know you wanted to be an actress?”
I sniff and look at my nails, t
ry to figure out how much I want to tell.
“I got cast as the troll in a Billy Goats Gruff play at school and I think that was the first time I felt like I wanted it but I was really bad. I’m still not sure if I’m any good but I want it really badly.”
Jake pinches my side and I jump, which takes away my insecurity momentarily and I pinch him back. We derail into a tickle fight and soon he rolls me on top of him.
“Who the hell made you a troll?”
“I was an amazing troll! The best troll! At least my mom made the best troll costume. And she sprayed like an entire can of Aquanaut on my hair so it stuck straight up and so no one noticed if I fumbled my lines.” Jake is shaking his head.
“No, no, no. Too much. Say that you were in a school play. That you loved the experience and caught the bug and have dedicated your life to being the best actress and dancer you can be. Don’t ever say that you don’t think you’re good. You’re amazing. You have the role to prove it.”
I don’t say that I worry the only reason I have the role is because of Richard—no, I’ll definitely start crying if I think about that. Maybe Jake senses that, because he picks me up and swings me towards the water, teasing like he will throw me in. I squeal and pretend bang my fists on his pecs.
“One, two,” and before he can say three, he tosses me in and I grab my nose before I hit the water. All the world and sound disappear and I enjoy it for a moment, somersaulting before swimming back up. Just in time to see him leap into a cannon ball. When he emerges the water cascades down his chiseled face, catching in his long lashes. We spend a few moments splashing at each other. He dips under the water and for a moment I can’t even find his body when I feel him grasp my legs and pull me down. When we surface again, I spit water in his face, which takes him by surprise. Thanks to that little gap in my teeth, I can get a good fountain going. It’s nice to hear him laugh. I kick at him playfully and slide onto a floating raft.