“You’ve never read anything of mine. You didn’t even know until this moment. How can you say that?”
“I don’t have to read shit to know you are amazing and to know I believe in you.”
I almost took my fork and stuck it right in my heart because I was done. There were so many times I didn’t think what Evelyn and I had could get better, but then she’d say something like this, and my fucking soul would go up in flames. It was heat and devotion and it warmed my entire body. It was the shit song lyrics were about and sappy greeting card commercials. Hell. If I could buy the world a Coke in those moments I would because everyone on the planet should know this kind of rush.
I stood up only to lean back down and kiss her. “I promise,” I said, my lips almost touching hers.
She gave me so much and I was unsure how much I was giving in return. Promises between us were sometimes the only thing I could do to make sure she knew what she meant to me. It seemed juvenile in theory, but keeping my word was all I was sure of.
I’d mentioned earlier I wanted to take her to see a play after dinner so leaving Carson’s full and slightly buzzed was a nice transition to the next part of the night. The wind had picked up slightly, blowing her blond hair around her face and the scent of her perfume in the air. She looked like she always did tonight, but there was something different.
“What are you staring at?” she asked.
We were stopped in front of an old cement building, with a ticket booth, and a cracked window. I hadn’t realized I was staring.
“I’m going to miss you,” I blurted out.
A smile crept across her face as she pushed her hair out of her face. “Well, aren’t you a sugar?”
She stepped close and stood on her tiptoes to kiss me on the lips. My thumb brushed against her cheek while my mind knew to commit to memory the touch of her smooth skin.
“I’ll miss you, too,” she said, grinning against my lips.
I buried my head in her neck, breathing and drinking her in. “And that fucking perfume, too. You’re going to need to leave something of yours at my place when you leave.”
“Aww,” she said. “I definitely will, especially because I have a very strong sense of what it does to you.”
“You do, do you?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, nuzzling my own neck. “A…reaction…to scent is a very normal…response.”
With the subtlety only a woman could possess, she covertly ran her fingers down the seam of my jeans zipper.
“Shit, beautiful,” I hissed in her ear. “I’ve got jeans on. You know it gets all tight in there if you get me hard.”
“Sorry I’m not sorry.”
Was there a polite way to say her perfume gave me an instant blood-to-my-dick type response that made me wonder what parts of her body that perfume was applied to? Back of the ears, neck, between breasts, navel…the possibilities were endless. My mind went to all those places on her body, her skin, nakedness, my fingers running across…
“You ready to move on?” she asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Or do you need another minute to get your boner under control?”
Was she fucking kidding me?
“Close your mouth,” she laughed. She patted my chest. “Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Who says boner anymore?”
“I do. This it?” she said, pointing to the building.
It didn’t look like much of a theater, but then again it was Chicago. Shit was old here. Dilapidated on the outside usually meant it was full of amazing history and architecture on the inside.
“Yeah, it is. Let me go get the tickets,” I said, walking to the booth, standing at the end of a line three people deep.
“This is the Nickerson Theater right?” I asked when I reached the front.
“Yeah, that’s it,” said the guy behind the glass. “You’re here for Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack?”
“Yeah. Two tickets, please.” I mean, it was a weird name, but Marshall said, when I had asked him for ideas on something different to do after dinner, this was the perfect spot. A humorous satire based in an apocalyptic world where no taboo is off limits. Money was exchanged and he slid the tickets across to me. “Enjoy,” my new friend said. “Sit near the front. Best place to be.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
As we stepped inside, Evelyn tumbled a bit, and I grabbed her arm to prevent her from falling.
“Shit,” she whispered. She looked down at the floor. “The carpet is all torn up. No wonder.”
“Well, that’s a liability. You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m going to run to the ladies’ room, okay?”
“No problem. I think it’s over there,” I said, pointing to the far corner with a dimly lighted, retro RESTROOM sign.
“I’ll be right back.”
I watched her walk away, hoping she wouldn’t turn around to see me staring again, but I couldn’t help it. The last few months had gone by so damn fast with one day running into the next. I didn’t even have time to think before some papers were waved in front of my face.
“Here,” said a burly guy with gray hair and a beard. He shoved a couple programs at me and walked away.
“Friendly bunch,” I said under my breath.
While she was in the bathroom, I took the time to take in my surroundings. The carpet was, in fact, ripped in several places, and the walls didn’t have much of the architectural flair that I thought I might see. In fact, the walls were covered with a stucco, popcorn-like surface, some of it crumbling in certain areas. The carpet underneath had a good dusting of it, which showed that either the building was falling apart as I stood there, or it hadn’t been vacuumed in a long time.
I shrugged. Everything wasn’t the Civic Opera House. I was sure the performance would be great.
I glanced at the front of the program: a production of Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack.
Well. That was a hell of a name. It was obviously very satirical, but now I was questioning how much. The people waiting to get in all looked like a normal bunch.
Opening the program, I found it read like any other I’d seen, except for one spot at the bottom that read:
If you have any concerns with the clothes you are wearing getting stained, or if projectile liquids freak you out, we suggest moving farther from the first four rows.
What the fuck did that mean? Clearly it had to be a joke because—
“Want to go sit?” Evelyn said, stepping up next to me and sliding her hand into mine.
“Yeah, sure.”
I looked down at the tickets and noticed there was no seat numbers or rows. Just a short note about general admission and no flash photography.
“What the fuck?” I whispered, noticing we’d be sitting on milk crates instead of chairs.
“Oh,” Evelyn said. “Well, this seems…cozy. Where do you think we should sit?”
“I’m not making you sit on a milk crate for a show that has a projectile liquid warning in the program.”
She laughed, squeezing my hand. “You’re not making me do anything. Plus, I’m sure they’re just being ironic. Come on.”
With that smile, how could I refuse? I guided her to our seats, third-row front milk crates.
“Cozy,” she said, leaning into me. Her hand rested on my knee, and I noticed her nails had a fresh coat of burgundy polish on them. She always had some sort of red on her nails, and I didn’t think it questioned my masculinity at all to notice it. It was one of those things I noticed and thought was insanely sexy, especially when her hand, those painted fingers, were wrapped around my cock.
My body tensed when I realized she probably had them done earlier that day in anticipation of leaving. She’d gotten her hair done, or bleached, or whatever the hell it was she did to it, the day before. She’d been primping for weeks actually—new clothes and shoes getting delivered to her apartment. One pair of shoes had a label on it with a price that almost made me pass out. She had been getting ready for a
while. I hadn’t been.
I slid my arm around her, gently nudging her closer. “I think I can deal with this under these circumstances.”
“Thanks for everything so far. I’m having a good time.”
“So am I.”
Those blue eyes of hers were staring straight into mine as she fit perfectly into me. As the lights dimmed, I curled my arm around her next, to bring her lips to mine, which were sticky and sweet from her gloss.
Then the stage lights came on full blast, and the moment was lost. Our kiss broke, and our attention was directed to the stage where an actress, dressed in a cheerleading costume, was on her knees, simulating a blow job on an actor in a three-piece suit.
Satire, Abel. Relax. It’s only a metaphor for the rest of the play.
“Ohhhkay,” she mouthed to me.
I shifted uncomfortably in my milk crate seat and hoped that this was the worst of it. I mean, how much worse could it get?
The actress that was on her knees stood up, lifting her short skirt, exposing a bright red thong. She reached around to her hip, lifting a knife from a holster.
She lunged toward suit guy and began stabbing him repeatedly, screaming as fake blood began to squirt out of him. Squirt wasn’t quite the right word. It was, like they had warned, projectile.
And it came right at us.
And it went all over her.
All. Over. Her.
“Holy—” she said.
“Shit!” I shouted.
I guess she wasn’t afraid to get a little messy. I just didn’t think it would happen here. I was going to fucking kill Marshall for this.
* * *
I unlocked the door to my apartment, and once we were inside, I slammed it shut. I was so frustrated with the way things went down at that play. I had wanted the night to be perfect. What I got was my girlfriend standing in front of me with a ruined shirt and my dignity wounded.
“Get that shirt off, beautiful,” I said.
“What?” she said with a wink. “No foreplay?”
“Ha-ha. Very funny. I want to get it in the wash. How the hell do I even get,” I said, motioning up and down her shirt, “fake blood or Kool-Aid or whatever the fuck it is out of it?”
She stepped close, wrapping her arms around my waist and looking up at me. “I don’t care about this shirt.”
“And you obviously don’t care about mine, either,” I snapped. “You’re getting whatever is still wet on me.”
I untangled myself from her and began rapidly unbuttoning my shirt, but when it wasn’t coming off fast enough, I ended up yanking it open. Buttons flew everywhere, echoing against the floor and wall.
“Fuck,” I said, throwing the shirt on the floor with it.
I ran my hands through my hair before pressing my palms against my temples. Why the hell did it have to be tonight? Nothing I planned was right, and I wanted it to be.
Evelyn’s eyes were wide, her eyebrows lifted as she watched my temper tantrum. She did not seem impressed. I couldn’t say I blamed her. I was ruining our last night.
“Hey,” I said, reaching for her again.
But she backed up, and without a word, she lifted her light blue shirt over her head. “I’m going to try some cold water and dish soap on this, and when I get back, you better have a new attitude; otherwise this will be as close as you get to me for a long time.”
“Come on, Evelyn,” I said.
But she walked right past me, her hand up to stop me from saying anymore. An unjustifiable anger rose through me, a different one than being angered at a night gone bad. She was being so calm, so…fine with everything. Wasn’t she feeling sad or scared about leaving? I bent down to pick up my shirt and scattered buttons, but those clear kind were a bitch to find in my light-colored carpeting. I was crawling around on my hands and knees, searching, when Evelyn returned and stood in front of me.
She tapped her foot against the carpet before nudging me with her toe. “Better?” she asked.
I crawled closer to her legs and wrapped my arms around her at her knees. “Yes. I’m sorry,” I said, looking up at her.
“For?”
I sat up on my knees, running my hands up from her knees to her ass. “For acting like a fucking baby.”
“And?”
I pressed my lips to the bottom of her bare stomach, planting kisses all over the area and then following the same path with the tip of my tongue. “And for being a dick over nothing.”
Her hands tangled into my hair, gripping it in bunches to pull me tighter. I ran my fingers along the top of her jeans before unhooking the button and pushing the zipper down. My mouth was back on her skin, her breathing increasing with each pass I took.
“And?” she whispered.
“And for not using the night to show you, in every single way I could, just how much I’m going to miss you.”
“You’re forgiven.”
I took her by the hand to my bedroom, but once we entered, we separated and I went to sit on the bed. She stood in the center of my room, her hair falling over her shoulders and her tits spilling out of the top of her light pink bra. I knew her panties were the same color, even though I’d only seen the lacy top of them. I usually liked her in the dark bras and matching underwear, but something about the pink against her skin, how it almost looked like another layer of skin, made my cock respond. Heavily.
I pushed myself to the back of the bed, resting against the headboard. “Take off your clothes for me, Evelyn.”
She obeyed and did it exactly how I would’ve wanted her to. Starting at her jeans, she finished unzipping them, and before she began to pull them down, she turned around. Her fingers hooked the sides of the jeans around her hips, and she bent from the waist as she eased them down her legs. It was the most perfect view of her ass made only more perfect by a thong in the same color as her bra. She turned around again and stood still, waiting for me.
“I want it all off, beautiful,” I said.
Her arms extended across her back to unhook her bra. It loosened, and she let the straps slide down her shoulders…her arms and then off. I was still looking at amazing tits, and while it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before, I knew it was going to be a while before I’d see her like this. Before telling her what to do next, she continued by removing her panties, letting them fall to the floor at her feet.
I’d never get tired of how beautiful she was or how incredible her body was. While her body could turn me on in a second, her confidence and trust she had with us that allowed her to be completely vulnerable in front of me drove me wild in a different way.
“Your turn?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, unbuttoning my jeans and lowering the zipper. “I need to be sure you’re ready for me.
“Is that so?”
I slipped my hand down to the outside of my boxers, running my hand over my erection. “You see, beautiful. I’m so ready for you. I need to be sure you’re just as ready.”
“I am.”
“Touch yourself. I want you to prove it to me.”
A tiny smirk lifted one side of her mouth as she traced the tips of her fingers around and between her breasts before working her way down. My hand wrapped around my cock, and with tame strokes, I gave it the attention it needed without going overboard. The palm of her hand skimmed the top of her pelvis until it descended between her legs. I gazed at her, touching herself for me, and knew she was my weakness and strength all rolled up into one.
“I’m ready, handsome? Are you?” she asked.
I nodded as her naked body approached the bed, and she reached out for my hand as she climbed on. There was no part of me that didn’t want to take her immediately, get inside of her and be as close to her as possible. Tonight was going to be different. I wanted to take her slow, languish over every inch of skin.
I slipped off my shirt and jeans, followed by my boxers, and brought her in close to me. Our naked bodies intertwined, but not fucking yet made my heart race. I
tried to ease the panic settling into my bones by kissing her lips, running my tongue over them to remember her taste. The air buzzed around us, an electricity was created.
It was all overwhelming me. The thought of her leaving and being gone for months. Before the words even left my mouth, I hated myself a little for asking it.
“Do you have to go?” I asked.
A soft sigh breezed across my bare chest as her hand reach across my stomach for mine, intertwining her fingers with mine. “Yes.”
I nodded because I didn’t know what I could fucking say that didn’t make me come off as more of a pussy than I already was. Not like my silence could be misconstrued as being even more pathetic.
This was all happening so fast. It was too fast. My mind, my body, every single cell making me up was erupting in chaos. It was completely taking me over. The closer I got to her, the more scared I got she was going to slip away from me. Women were always replaceable for me, the next one waiting in the wings to satisfy whatever need I had. Evelyn was irreplaceable.
Panic crept into every part of me, enveloping me. What the hell was happening?
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, running her fingers up and down mine.
I sighed, unsure of how much or how little I should say. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Ever.”
“Same here.”
“And I don’t know, like, how to compartmentalize it all. Me wanting you to stay, but wanting you to go out there and kick ass. Me knowing I’ll feel this loneliness, this empty part of me with you gone, and not knowing how to deal with it.”
I’d been afraid to look at her, wondering if what I was saying was wrong or if she’d think I was being a sappy asshole. But when I glanced at her eyes, her fingers that had been dancing across mine halted and she was all eyes. Eyes on me, on mine.
Her forehead creased so slightly, but enough for me to recognize she was worried, that there was something she was holding back, too.
I brushed my hand across her cheek before brushing a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Now it’s my turn. What are you thinking?” I asked.
So Screwed Page 19