The Thrill of It

by Lauren Blakely

  “Yeah.”

  “Can we stay all night?” I joke.

  “Maybe,” he says softly, and his voice sounds different. I don’t know what it is, but he seems vulnerable, like he’s about to say something.

  “Maybe?”

  He shrugs, drops his backpack to the ground, and leans against the wall. The night air is warm, and I can hear the sounds of traffic not far from us — horns honking, tires squealing, but then it fades in my ears as he lifts a hand, and it feels as if he might be reaching for me. I don’t know, I’m not sure, I don’t know how to read this moment, and how it’s shifted to possibility. Because I don’t know what happens when a girl likes a boy, and a boy likes a girl, and if that’s even what’s going on here. All my finely-tuned radar is off, it’s skittering, it’s pointing in every direction because everything is different when I’m not being paid for pleasure.

  The world slows down as he touches my arm. The second he makes contact, his fingertips both electric and unbelievably soft and gentle on my skin, I know he senses that something has changed. Maybe he could tell I was at the end of my rope, was veering toward Cam. I close my eyes for the briefest of moments, delighting in how my arm is tingling. The sensations race through my body, and I want to be touched by him. I don’t have to feign interest, or fake a turned-on look.

  But an ominous sound squawks from my back pocket. Darth Vader’s theme music.

  “Fuck.” The moment isn’t just broken. It’s shattered into a million shards that cut me and leave me bleeding.

  I grab my phone and open the email from Miranda.

  There’s no subject line, she never bothers with subject lines, I’m not worthy of a subject line. I have to open the email to see what she wants. It’s a small act, but it sends a powerful message. She holds all the cards.

  I click on the email. She doesn’t write my name.

  It just says: package coming friday after 330 by courier specific time unknown return per usual

  Which is bullshit. She knows the time. She knows it down to the fraction of a second, I’m sure. She probably has an advanced computer simulation program on how to blackmail most effectively and relies on the perfect combination of algorithms and data and past behavior and future predictions to determine exactly when, where, why and how to send me her next set of instructions. And she’s not going to tell me the time, never has, never will. Her whole game is for me to be on pins and needles waiting for the package while simultaneously keeping my mom from intercepting the package. She often sends them to my mom’s house, so she can torture me, make me scamper across the alligator pit.

  I write back to Miranda, equally curt, but managing to capitalize and use periods: Message received.

  I shut down my email and close my eyes. I feel Trey press his hand on top of mine.

  I open my eyes and look at him again. I am twisted inside out. I could punch this brick wall now, split my knuckles open, and slam it all over again. I push my hands roughly through my hair and groan loudly in frustration. “I fucking hate her.”

  “Me too,” he whispers. “I hate her for you.”

  “I hate how she controls my life,” I say between gritted teeth.

  I breathe out hard, wishing I could release all this coiled tension from my body. Trey is still leaning against the wall, and his gorgeous arms are on display, the art swirling down in lines, shapes, patterns that mesmerize me. His arms are strong, sculpted and muscular. I want them around me.

  Fuck everything else in the world right now.

  I step toward him, cup his cheeks. “I’m tired of waiting for you,” I say, shedding all my walls. He knows all my secrets and lies. He can know my truth. “I’m so tired of it,” I say softly, then I hold his gaze and trail my fingers along his jawline, from his earlobe, across his scar to his chin, watching the expression in his eyes shift from surprise to desire. To desperate want. I run my index finger across his top lip, and he closes his eyes briefly, his chest rising and falling, his breath catching. He opens his eyes again, watches me. I touch his bottom lip, and he nips on my finger, then flashes a quick grin that fades as he whispers, “I’m tired too.”

  That’s it. That’s all. I can’t wait. I don’t want to. I’m sick of it. I need this contact with him. I need this moment. I need to know what it’s like again to have this kind of connection.

  I kiss him.

  Slow. Soft. But full of need. Full of hope. Full of my wish for this, us, him and me, to become more than just friends. I want him so badly, I want to return to our night, I want him to take away the pain again. I want his touch to remind me that there is good in the world, that two people can care and be close, and it doesn’t have to be a game, or someone using the other.

  That there can be something real and true.

  He groans as I trace his lips with my tongue. His lips part, and he lets me lead the kiss, lets me taste his mouth and his tongue. Then, in seconds, the kiss changes. He spins me around, and now my back is against the brick wall, and he threads his hands into my hair, running his fingers through the thick strands, all while kissing me deeply, his tongue sliding against mine, his breath tasting so good, his lips capturing mine. It’s a fiery kiss, full of months of pent-up longing, borne of a night when everything seems so far out of reach that sometimes you have to grab the visceral, the physical, to tie you back to earth. To make you forget all the ways your life is spinning beyond your control. He kisses harder, insistently, as if he can’t get enough of me, as if he needs to taste me, to drown in this kiss with me.

  I lose myself too. I let go of the meeting, of the SOS to Cam, of Danielle’s words, of my mom’s insatiable need to hook me up, of the stories Miranda makes me write, of my past. I shed them all. They are vapor, they are nothing, I am new again.

  I am no longer that person.

  Layla is gone as I am at once lost and found in a kiss like this. A kiss that has nothing to do with power, or games, or control. A kiss that simply has to be. His hands in my hair, then roaming down my back, then grappling at my hips. And all the while we are in this together, we both want this, we both need this, there is no uneven distribution of desire, or money, or want. His lips consume me with desperation, and soon he’s traversing my neck, and kissing the hollow of my throat, and I gasp quietly.

  “Oh,” I say, but for me that’s everything because I don’t make noise, I don’t vocalize, I don’t let on when I’m turned on.

  “Fuck, Harley,” he says, and grabs my ass and pulls me against him, so I can feel how much he wants this too. He licks his way up my neck, and I melt inside with longing as his lips brush my earlobe. As if he’s about to whisper something. Maybe tell me how much he wants to taste me and touch me.

  But then his hands are on my shoulders, and he’s no longer holding me close. He’s holding me back. I’m standing here panting, lost in some sort of crazed moment of lust, and he’s suddenly all cool and calm as he says, “But I can’t. I can’t go there. And I have to get the fuck away right now.”

  He grabs his backpack and leaves, the screen door swinging with several creaks.

  He’s gone.

  And I’m alone in this ridiculously romantic courtyard in the middle of New York. Hot and bothered and utterly left behind. Like an idiot. Like a stupid fucking idiot.

  My phone buzzes. I grab it in milliseconds, hoping it’s Trey.

  But it’s Cam.

  Missing things? Missing me? That can be fixed in an instant, sweetheart. Tomorrow night. Bliss Bar. 7 p.m. Be there.

  Chapter Six

  Trey

  I slam the door to my apartment, lock it and slide the chain.

  As if I can sequester myself. As if I can shut myself off from her, and stay inside my home, far, far away from Harley. Like I’m sealed up and safe again.

  But the thing is this….

  She has to go to SLAA.

  She was forced to go.

  She’s being blackmailed.

  I chose to go. No one made me. No one forced m
e. I guess you could say Mr. Thompson did when he found me making out with his wife in the elevator at my parent’s apartment building. I run my finger across the scar on my cheek, and the pain echoes, even months later as I head to the cramped kitchen. I don’t think I realized just how strong he was. Or how mad he’d be, but when his fist connected with my face, I felt his college ring rattle through every bone in my body.

  They make the rings damn solid at Yale University.

  Yeah, it hurt.

  When you’ve been pummeled by a man who’s six-five, two-hundred-forty pounds and wears one of those big-ass class rings, I guess that’s how you manage a self-imposed monkhood for a year. The ring sliced my cheek apart. I could actually see several millimeters of the meat under the skin right after it happened. My mom sewed me up that evening without a word. The scar would have been much worse if I didn’t have that sort of access to one of the premier plastic surgeons in Manhattan. She wasn’t happy with me but what could she do? I was twenty, and she couldn’t control me. She could have cut me off from college, but she wants me in school more than anything. Besides, in my family, we deal with the practical. We shut the door to rooms that aren’t used, we stitch up cuts, we take painkillers to numb the day, and we don’t talk about things.

  I didn’t talk about my brothers. Because they didn’t talk about my brothers. So why would they want to talk about why I was spending so much time with the married women in the swank Upper East Side building where they lived? But I knew I had a problem, and the cut on my face was my rock bottom. I didn’t need someone else to find the bottom of addiction for me. I fucking found it, and I decided to get my shit together after I spent the better part of my teenage years screwing married women in my building.

  I knew what I was doing was messing me up. Had known it for a long, long time. Not because the sex was bad. It was good. It was great. It was the stuff of legend.

  But as I toss my backpack on the floor, grab a cold beer from the fridge, and turn up the music on my iPod so I can blast Remy Zero throughout my whole apartment, I am also reminded that it was hollow.

  That I was so disconnected from all of them. I was ghosting through life, taking what I wanted, stealing what others had.

  But the one night with Harley was the closest I’ve ever felt to right. Maybe that sounds crazy, but I felt like we were both in it together, that we weren’t chess pieces for the other person to move around. We’d showed our cards and there was no bluffing.

  That’s the problem, I realize, as I drink my beer, and the band sings about falling to the ground.

  She can’t operate like that, and hell if I know if I can either.

  So if I get caught up in her, and I will, I fucking will, what happens to me when she realizes she’s not ready? What if I’m just a quick fix to her, and she turns around and goes back to Cam? Or ditches me? And then I’m worse off.

  Back to all my old ways.

  To all the afternoons in high school I spent tangled up with Cassie Fitzgerald in her penthouse, or Elle Windsor in her husband’s town car, or even the sexy trophy wife – Sloan McKay – of one of the biggest hedge fund manager’s in New York. All while he was busy pulling millions, I was taking care of his wife in the bedroom since he didn’t anymore. She was an artist too, a painter, and the only one I ever felt an inkling of a connection with, the only one who remotely seemed like more than a conquest. She moved out of the building quickly though, and I moved on to the next woman.

  Such a rush. Such a thrill. They got what they wanted from me. From how I made them feel. From the high of being the young guy who could turn them on.

  If I walked into a frat house and told my story, I’d have high-fives six ways to Sunday. If my friends knew they’d make a statue for me, give me the chair at the head of the table in the cafeteria, build an honorary wing in my name and ask for blessings before any date with a girl, praying to Trey Westin, patron saint of Has A Way with Women.

  It’s the tale that gets passed down from one generation of frat brothers to the next. Only there was more to my conquests than bagging the hottest babes.

  There always is.

  They were a way to forget.

  I rub my hand absently against the trio of sunbursts on my shoulder, one of the tats that I designed myself a few months ago. To remember. To never forget. Then I toast heavenward, a futile toast, and finish my beer. The coldness and the fizz roots me back to the moment. Shakes me out of the past, the memories. If I spend too much time there, I’ll never move on. I need to start over tomorrow. See my shrink. Sort this out. Go back to being friends with Harley again. Because I can’t stand not having her in my life.

  Almost as much as I can’t stand not kissing her.

  I turn my head and sniff my shirt, and fuck…I can still smell her on me. Her wild cherry smell lingers all over my shirt. Her intoxicating, sexy-as-hell scent from when she was all snug against me. I close my eyes, inhale, and I am right back to thirty minutes ago in the courtyard, remembering how she touched me, kissed me, ran her hands in my hair.

  In seconds, I am rock hard again. This is what she does to me. This is all it takes.

  She slides into my head, and I am turned on beyond belief. Wanting her. Wanting all I can’t have.

  I put the empty bottle down on the coffee table, yank off my shirt, and inhale it one more time, so she’s filled all my senses. I head to the bathroom. I turn on the shower, adjusting the temperature all the way up. Then take off my jeans, leaving them in a heap on the floor, my boxer briefs next. I step under the water, wetting my hair, my skin, soaping up all over, then rinsing it off. I close my eyes as the water beats down hard on me, and then I say fuck it.

  I picture the moment from earlier, going further, going everywhere I wanted it to go.

  I take off her clingy t-shirt, toss it on the ground somewhere. She doesn’t care because she wants my hands on her. She’s licking her lips, and I bury my face between her perfect gorgeous breasts. I grip myself harder, imagining kissing her breasts, sucking hard on her nipples, hearing her moan. I want to feel her hands in my hair, tugging hard as she pushes me down her body. I want to lick her all over, taste every inch of her skin, from her breasts to her belly, to her legs. Kiss her all the way down to her ankles, feel her tremble all over, hear those sexy, breathy moans she makes.

  I swear I’ve never wanted anyone so much as I picture doing all sorts of things to her.

  Images flash by quickly. Her hands on me, unsure at first, then all over. Then me on my knees, pushing up her skirt, peeling off her underwear in the courtyard, tasting her, licking her, kissing her. She can’t help herself – she moans and sighs and pants like she did that time we were together. She made the sexiest little sounds when I was with her that one night, as if she didn’t know what was happening to her own body, as if it was all happening for the first time and she was overcome, lost in all these new sensations that I brought to her.

  I feel a build in the base of my spine, the release starting to rocket through my body. I squeeze my eyes shut, scalding water pelting my hair, turning my skin red, and I don’t care, because I’m where I want to be right now, on my knees, my hands cupping her ass, bringing her closer to my mouth, until I can taste her coming on my tongue.

  “Fuck.”

  I groan loudly and come hard.

  I rest my forehead against the tiles for a minute as the aftershocks chase me. God, I wish she were here right now. I wish I could touch her all night long, spread her out on my bed, and bring her there.

  Then spend the night with her.

  Be the guy who doesn’t pay.

  Be the guy she wants.

  The guy she’s not set up with.

  But I’ll never know if she wants me for me. Or because I’m part of her fix.

  Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict…

  Page 123…

  I learned to lie from my mom.

  When I was thirteen my mom and her boyfriend took me to a carnival in Great Neck out on Long Isla
nd.

  His name was Pierre and he looked the name. He wore pressed khakis and a button-down short-sleeve shirt even in the summer, even to a carnival. He had manicured hands, his nails were buffed and filed in perfect half circles. He bought me pink cotton candy and handed it to me daintily with those hands that smelled of honeysuckle lotion. Then my mom spotted the carnival dude who guesses your age. If he comes within three years, you lose. If he doesn’t, you win a stuffed blue bear.

  “Guess her age,” my mom said, thrusting me forward, taking the cotton candy out of my hands before he even saw it, in case it made me look too young. I wore low-rise jean shorts and a cami-tank. My hair was down, falling past my shoulders. I stood there for a moment before him, holding my ground, holding his gaze, like a cat staring down her prey before she pounced. Then I did what I knew mom wanted me to do. I tossed my hair ever so gently, ever so casually, but completely seductively. Like she’d taught me all those times when we prepped for our parties.

  The Guess Your Age guy was young. He was a teenager, probably a high school guy working the carnival after school.

  He appraised me up and down, his big, brown eyes on me, liking what he saw. He flashed his smile to my mom.“Write down her age.” He handed her a pen and piece of paper from a notebook in his back pocket. She dutifully wrote down my age, folded up the paper and handed it back to him. He took the paper but didn’t open it.

  “She’s sixteen,” the carnival man declared.

  Triumphant, my mom shook her head. “Thirteen,” she said proudly as he opened the paper to see my age. She ran a hand over my hair, petting her prize racehorse, and we walked away. She didn’t bother to get the blue bear she’d won. She got what she wanted. A thirteen-year-old who looked sixteen.

  “He’s cute, don’t you think?”

  “Mom,” I chided.

  “He’s adorable, Harley,” she said in a teacherly tone. As if she were instructing me in the ways of taste and attraction. “He’s probably fourteen, maybe fifteen. You guys would be cute together.”