by Sarah Kuhn
I reached out with my mind, trying to get at the zipper with my telekinesis. But it was no use. I couldn’t see the zipper. I tried again and again, but to no avail. This stupid . . . limitation on my power was going to kill me.
I tried twisting around to see if I could spot the zipper in the mirror, but a film descended over my vision, blurring everything, and I realized I was about to pass out or maybe die—really, either would be fine if it just stopped the horrible pain overwhelming all of my senses, making it impossible to think or breathe or even scream. I thought I heard my name being called, but I knew that must be an aural hallucination, some weird trick of the mind that happened right before someone succumbed to the arms of death.
It hit me suddenly that I’d never be able to talk to Evie or Scott again. Evie’s last memory of us would involve me totally embarrassing her at her own party and Scott would never know . . . never know . . .
My eyes filled with tears, and I was overwhelmed with desperation, regret, and deep, piercing sadness. I always managed to pull away from him. Even in the Gutter closet, when we’d let our guards down, when he’d said I’d had every right to not feel the way he did back when he tried to kiss me . . . I hadn’t responded. I’d let him think I didn’t feel anything. I’d pulled away from him again. This horrible, consuming pain was stripping me of all the rationalizations I had used—that keeping him at a distance was for the greater good, that I couldn’t let Annie Chang take over and get soft about him. All I could think now was that I needed him to know how I really felt. How I’d wanted that moment when we were finally and fully ourselves with each other to last forever. How he made me feel everything.
And goddammit, I wanted to tell Evie I hadn’t ruined her engagement party on purpose.
Fuck this.
Aveda Jupiter never went down without a fight.
I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I threw my mental feathers out with renewed vigor, tried to force them through the pain and the resistance I was getting from the dress, grappling around behind me, trying to get at the zipper—or any part of the dress, really—even though my vision was clouding over and I couldn’t see anything . . .
And then suddenly, I heard a loud ripppppp and felt cold air hitting my bare skin and my vision started to focus again and I realized strong hands were gripping my shoulders and Scott’s face was blurring in and out and he was screaming my name over and over and over again.
I blinked once, twice. Aware of the total absence of pain. It was like a balm all over my body. Maybe this was what death felt like?
As my vision cleared, I realized I wasn’t dead or even unconscious. I was sprawled on the plush red floor of the boutique and Scott was actually there, and I wasn’t wearing the dress anymore. In fact, I wasn’t wearing much of anything. I looked down at my body. All I had on was Evie’s lacy bridal lingerie, which now sported more than a few interestingly positioned holes. My brain seemed to light up, returning to full alertness.
“The dress,” I croaked out. “Where’s the dress?”
“It’s in the trap,” Scott said. “You had managed to get it partway off your body, and I got it the rest of the way and stuffed it in the trap . . .”
He trailed off, his breathing ragged. I took stock of his features. His eyes were wild, lit up by a combination of anger and confusion and naked terror.
“And the puppy,” I managed. “Is it still . . .”
“The scanner’s not picking anything up, and I’m not sensing anything, so it’s not in the air,” he said. “If it was in the dress, it should be trapped in there—luckily I still had the scanner and the trap with me when I used a tracking spell to find you. I never should have let you go off by yourself, I—”
“Good,” I interrupted, my voice weak and thin. “That’s good. Maybe we caught it this time.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” he growled. “Did you really come in here all by yourself and put on that dress and try to fight it with no backup or—”
His words became a burble in my ear. Because all I could think of was the regret that had pierced my soul when I realized I’d never get to tell him how I felt—how I really felt—with no filter, no bullshit.
I wanted to tell him.
Hell, I wanted to show him. It suddenly seemed like the most necessary thing in the world.
“Annie.” His voice pierced my thoughts. His hands tightened around my shoulders. “Dammit. Tell me you’re okay. I can’t fucking live with myself if you’re not okay—”
I kissed him.
It was another kiss like the one we’d shared on the gym floor: raw, visceral. He responded, his hands sliding from my shoulders to my back to pull me against him, holding me like he never wanted to let me go. He gasped my name between each kiss, like he was trying to reassure himself that I was still there. Still alive.
I felt consumed by him, overwhelmed by his lips and his hands and the heat of his body against mine. And I still needed to feel more, so I wrapped my legs around his waist and pressed myself firmly against him, gasping when I realized he was already hard and hot and ready. He groaned, his lips moving to my neck, my collarbone, a trail of fire against my skin. One of his hands slid up my ribcage to cup my breast. The lace of the bridal bra had seemed flimsy and insufficient when I’d put it on, but when his thumb stroked over the material, it rasped against my nipple, and I shuddered.
I didn’t think it was possible for my excitement to intensify any further, but then he lowered his head and slipped my nipple into his mouth. It was still covered by the lace of the bra and the combined sensations—the wet heat of his tongue, the material rubbing against me—nearly sent me over the edge. I moaned, my fingers tangling in his hair, and I wondered if he could keep doing that forever.
He moved back up and claimed my mouth with his and suddenly I couldn’t go a moment longer without touching him. I slid my hand between us and stroked him through his pants, thrilling at how hard he was and how that was for me—for us. I moved my hands back to his chest and undid his tie, the buttons on his shirt. I needed to feel skin. He growled against my mouth as I raked my fingernails over that hard wall of chest I’d fantasized about so much over the years. I moved my hand back down and worked the button on his pants—I wanted to make him groan like I’d heard before, as if it was coming from somewhere deep inside of him.
“Annie,” he gasped. He pulled away from our kiss and searched my face. He was breathing hard and his eyes were so intense and deadly serious, so different from his usual playful warmth. It made me feel again like I was seeing the deepest, truest version of him, the man who felt things more than he ever let on, who always seemed so mellow and easygoing but lit me up like a firecracker whenever he so much as touched me.
“Are you sure?” he managed. I could feel his heartbeat quickening, matching mine. “Are you sure you want to . . .”
I reached up and cupped his face—I wanted him to know that this was who I really was. That if you stripped all the layers away from me, I felt things as deeply as he did. And that I’d never wanted anything as badly as I wanted him right here, right now. I’d just narrowly escaped death and desperately needed to feel every inch of him against me, needed to show him that I didn’t care about anything except his mouth, his hands, his skin, and how overtaken I was by all of it.
“Yes,” I said. “I want to. I need to.” I reached across the floor and scrabbled around in my previously humiliating bag of sex toys and pulled out a condom. It was neon pink and apparently fruit punch-flavored, according to the label, and I probably should have been embarrassed—but right now, I didn’t care. I held it up to him. “Please.”
His eyes widened and I knew he wasn’t embarrassed, either.
Between the two of us, we managed to get his pants unbuttoned, my panties off, and the condom on—frantic, clumsy movements that only turned me on harder. And then he wa
s sliding inside of me and I gave over to that pure, all-consuming pleasure: not thinking about whether I should be doing this, whether I should be feeling this. Just feeling it, reveling in the way he buried his face in my neck, the way he tasted my skin, the way our bodies joined completely. I was still wearing the lacy bra and garters, and his clothes were sort of haphazardly pushed to the side and that just made things even hotter, like we needed each other so badly, we hadn’t been able to waste time getting completely naked.
We moved together, wild and desperate, and the room fell away and it was just the two of us, needing this. His mouth found my nipple again and I arched against him, succumbing to the feeling, the sensation. And just when I felt myself spiraling further and further into pleasure, just when I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore, he slid a hand between us and touched me right where I needed it and everything exploded into white light.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WHEN I WOKE up the next morning, I spent at least two full minutes being confused. I’d slept very deeply, and as my eyes fluttered open, I had to reorient myself to the basic concept of being alive.
But I was still alive, I was wrapped in a tangle of sheets, and my back was pressed against a hard wall of chest. I dislodged myself from that position slowly, sitting up in my bed, allowing all the images from the night before to pile up in my sleep-fogged brain.
After thoroughly desecrating Marcus’s precious salon floor, Scott and I had managed to get ourselves mostly dressed, gathered the scanner, trap, and the bag o’ dildos, and gotten the hell out of there, leaving through the back door (which was also unlocked—Marcus really needed to get a better security system). We hadn’t said much on the short walk home, except for him periodically asking me if I was okay, if I was sure I was okay, if we needed to wake Nate up to examine me. I’d maintained I was perfectly fine, even though being around him right after doing what we’d done made me feel exposed, like the softest, most vulnerable parts of myself were on display for all the world to see. I was definitely in full Annie Chang mode, and once we weren’t having incredibly hot sex, I didn’t know what to do with that.
But I was too tired, too wrung out, to be anything else.
When we’d gotten back to HQ, sheer exhaustion had taken over and we hadn’t wasted time with any more words or questions. We’d gone to my room, crawled into bed together, and passed out with what was left of our clothes on. I knew sleeping together—just sleeping—wasn’t nearly as intimate as what we’d done in the bridal salon, but waking up like this, with his arm locked around my waist, felt more intimate.
His arm stayed in that position even as I sat up, and he stirred in his sleep and pulled me closer, burying his face against my hip. I reached down and tentatively stroked his irresistibly mussed hair. He stirred again, but didn’t wake. I had no idea what was next for us, so for a moment, I allowed myself to enjoy the warmth of being snuggled together in bed.
But only for a moment, because there were things I needed to take care of.
I gently extricated myself from his arm and pulled the covers over his shoulders. He didn’t move and I was reminded of the lazy summer day between seventh and eighth grade when Evie and I discovered what a deep sleeper he was. He’d passed out on my parents’ couch while we were watching The Heroic Trio for the millionth time and Evie and I had taken the opportunity to draw all over his face in permanent marker, turning him into an alien cat with multi-colored flowers on one cheek. I remembered the two of us giggling and trying to shush each other so we wouldn’t wake him. Things had seemed so easy then.
I got out of the rags that remained of my clothes from the previous night, pulled on a tank top and yoga pants, and slipped out of the room, taking care to close the door quietly behind me.
I found Evie in the kitchen. She was seated behind the dining table, clad in ratty sweats, and appeared to have dumped the entire contents of a jumbo-size box of Lucky Charms out in front of her. She was picking through them and discarding the purple ones. This was normally a task she relished, but right now her movements were listless, like she was engaged in the most tedious household chore possible. She didn’t look up when I entered the room.
I sat down next to her and surveyed the scene. She hadn’t bothered with a bowl, the Lucky Charms were just spread all over the tabletop. And I had a hard time believing she planned on eating an entire tableful of junk cereal in one sitting, so this was clearly some bizarre form of stress relief.
I decided not to comment on any of that.
“Want some help?” I gestured to the cereal.
She shrugged. It wasn’t a no. I suppose she’d given up on getting Hurricane Annie to actually hear the word “no.”
I started picking through alongside her, running my fingers through the cereal bits, getting crumbly detritus under my nails. Touching every piece of the stuff probably rendered it unsanitary/inedible, but I decided not to mention that either. We worked for a few moments without saying anything, the soft rustle of the cereal against the table the only sound punctuating the silence.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. I kept my eyes trained on the cereal, scanning for telltale flashes of purple. It was easier than meeting her gaze. “I know I ruined everything. Well, I haven’t quite ruined the wedding yet, but there’s still time.” She gave a little snort and I wasn’t sure if it was a sound of derision or a near laugh, so I pressed on. “I really thought I was doing what was best for you. Giving you a beautiful party and soothing your nerves and taking care of the puppy demon and protecting you. Like I’m always trying to do. And that is what I’m always trying to do, even if it doesn’t always seem like it.”
I took a deep breath and kept going. “I feel like lately, everything I’ve ever known has just . . . unraveled. I’ve worked so hard and for so long to be Aveda Jupiter. I don’t know how to do anything else, how to be anything else. And suddenly, it seemed like Aveda Jupiter was, I don’t know . . . irrelevant. Not needed. Useless.” I made myself say each word, shoving down the tears that were gathering in my throat. “All those months with no demons, it seemed like San Francisco might not need me anymore. And hey, even if demons were to return? Maybe they don’t even need me then, because now they have something way better.” I gestured to her. “A bona fide firestarter of a superheroine—who, by the way, is much more down to earth and relatable and awesome than I could ever hope to be.” I gave her a slight smile. She stared at me, blank, wordless. It was disconcerting, and I had no idea what she was thinking. So I kept talking.
“I thought I could fix things the way I usually do. By working hard and being relentless and willing things to go my way. I thought if I made myself the best Aveda Jupiter ever—more kickass, more heroic, a better friend—it would solve everything. But it hasn’t. It’s not working. Nothing’s working. So I don’t know what I’m doing or who I am or if I’ll do anything useful or even borderline positive ever again.” I let out a long whoosh of a breath. “I’ve been trying so hard to do what I do best. But what Aveda Jupiter does best these days seems to be: fucking up every single thing that dares cross her path.”
“Why do you think it’s not working?” Evie said.
“What?” I shook my head, confused. She was staring back at me, still unreadable. But I sensed genuine curiosity creeping in around the edges of her expression.
“Why is your plan to be the best Aveda Jupiter ever not working?” she said, toying with a marshmallow bit.
“It’s Annie Chang,” I blurted out, frustration swelling in my chest. “That scared, ordinary little girl. The one who cried herself to sleep on prom night. The one who feels insecure like ninety percent of the time. The one who’s always having these inconvenient bursts of weak, mushy, incoherent, totally unheroic feelings and fucking up Aveda Jupiter’s path to awesomeness. I guess my whole identity crisis thing—all these feelings of being useless—made her come out hardcore. I mean, I think she started to come b
ack when you were posing as me, showing me just how unnecessary I actually was. And I can’t . . .” My voice caught and I swallowed hard. “I can’t get her to go away.”
Evie cocked her head, studying me. I shifted uncomfortably.
“Good,” she said.
I stiffened. “Excuse me?”
“Good,” she repeated emphatically. “I don’t want her to go away. I like Annie Chang.”
I shook my head, as if to banish the very thought. Evie gave me an amused look.
“You may have been Aveda Jupiter for a good, long while, but Aveda Jupiter owes everything to Annie Chang,” she said. “Annie Chang is the one who protected me from all those bullies in the first place. The one who threatened to beat someone up for daring to not ask me to the prom.” She reached over and took my hand, her eyes softening. “The one who’s always been there for me no matter what. And who, before she was anyone’s hero, was my friend.”
I stared at our intertwined fingers, trying to make sense of what she was saying.
“Aveda Jupiter is fabulous,” she continued. “Dazzling. A larger-than-life superheroine. But without Annie Chang, she’s not real. She’s not an actual human who feels human things for the other humans in her life. She’s a bulldozer who sees things in black and white and doesn’t realize that ‘just try harder’ is not the solution to every problem.”
I gave her a look. “If this is a pep talk, it’s a bad one.”
She laughed. “I’m saying, Aveda Jupiter needs Annie Chang. Annie Chang makes her more of a badass, not less. Look, it’s like Superman and Clark Kent—”
“Clark Kent is boring,” I sputtered. “Weak, mundane. Hiding all of his superheroic light. No one cares about Clark Kent!”
Evie’s jaw dropped. “Oh my god. That is such a terrible misreading of the Superman mythos.” She leaned in earnestly. “When you read a Superman story, part of it is always about Clark Kent. Yes, he’s a massively superpowered alien who has fantastical adventures, but his connections to people—the Kent parents, Lois Lane—are what make us care. They make him stronger, not weaker. Clark Kent is what allows him to be the best Superman possible!”