THE DIRTY ONES

by JA Huss

  There is one moment now. Just one where we are still. Connected by these hearts. Just one person.

  Then he’s pushing me against the glass again, his mouth seeking another kiss. It’s urgent this time. I reach down for his belt and unbuckle it quickly, lost in the soft jingling it makes. Like fairies in the woods calling us home.

  The button is popped, the zipper dragged down… and then I take him in my hand and squeeze.

  “Kiera,” he whispers. “Don’t ever stop,” he says, pulling my leggings down. Reaching under my knees to lift me up. Balancing me against the window as he presses himself into me. Connects us, skin to skin.

  His cock is between my legs, hard and ready. I grip his shoulders tight with one hand and reach between my legs to place him at my entrance.

  “No foreplay?” he asks, smiling.

  “This whole night was foreplay. I don’t get any more ready than this,” I reply, just as he thrusts forward, filling me up, hard and fast, until I gasp and he relents, satisfied that he’s inside me as deep as he can get.

  Our bodies still for a moment as we kiss again. I imagine him thrusting hard. Fucking my brains out in front of this window. I imagine how dirty it looks. My leggings stretched tight at my knees, which are pressed up against my breasts. The wild look of lust and longing in his eyes as he pulls out, just a little, just enough, and then slowly pushes himself back in deep.

  And then he does that again. And again. And again. Connor loves me in a way I’ve never experienced before. Never even dreamed of before. It’s agonizingly slow. It’s painfully soft. It’s excruciatingly perfect.

  But I want more. I am greedy, I know this. I am selfish to need him so much. My desire so ravenous. My lust so voracious. My longing so… so… so insatiable.

  And he reads me. He sees my feelings like I see his. He turns them all into words and writes his own story about me. About us.

  He says, “Yes.”

  And that’s all he needs to say. Just one word is all we need.

  So I say it back.

  “Yes.”

  It’s a signal to begin again. To start a new chapter or maybe a new book.

  He goes faster. Pulling and pushing. In and out of me. I grip him every way I know how. With my knees against the hard muscles of his arms. With my fingers, digging into his shoulders, unable and unwilling to let him go. With my pussy as I clench around his cock and let him know that yes, he is all I need to be satisfied.

  With my kiss, as our tongues tell the whole story.

  We are as physically close as two people can be to each other when one is being held sexually captive, fucked hard up against a window. But our feelings… the love. It’s possible to get closer in love, so I reach for him the only other way I know how.

  I reach for him with my soul.

  And he’s got a net, or a web, or maybe a trap—ready to catch me.

  I don’t know how long I spend in that trap. I don’t care. The world stops, and time stops, and we hold each other captive as we come.

  Him moaning. And me, moaning.

  And I think, as he leans into me, head on my shoulder, breath coming out in long, winded gasps… I think… I know him now.

  I know him.

  Eventually the world turns again. Time starts back up. He releases my soul and I release his soul, and he carries me over to the bed and gently puts me down on top of the covers.

  He stands there in his unbuckled pants, his chest bare, looking down at me.

  And then he takes off my boots. He drags the leggings down and discards them on the floor. He toes off his shoes, and takes off his pants, and gets on the bed next to me.

  We’re both cold, my nipples tight, pulling the skin of my breasts taut. But then he covers me with himself. His cold skin touches my cold skin and together we become warm.

  We don’t get under the covers. Not yet. We lie there, wrapped up in each other. Holding each other. Thinking, just thinking.

  Writing the end of the story.

  I don’t know when I fall asleep, but sleep is always like that. I just know it’s late when I wake up. Or early, depends how you look at things like time.

  Gently, so I don’t wake him, I untangle myself from his embrace, pull my sweater back on, and go looking for my notebook.

  It’s a beautiful notebook. I don’t need any more light than the twinkling ones outside to see it because I made it with my own hands from a beautiful old book with a gilded cover of yellow flowers inlaid over navy blue leather. It was falling apart, sitting on a shelf in a thrift store in Burlington, and I rescued it. Turned it into something new. I made the papers inside. Sewing the binding up with my own thread and fingers. And I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. A special story. One that deserves to be written in such a beautiful book.

  This is the story this book deserves.

  Connor loves Kiera and Kiera loves Connor. All the black moments are behind them. At least for now. At least for the rest of this night. And it’s time to be happy.

  I sneak out of the bedroom and walk the long hallway to the other side of Sofia’s lower floor and slip into the office.

  I consider writing at the desk because it faces Central Park and you can see the Upper West Side on the other side, peeking out from the carpet of treetops like the future coming up with the sun.

  But Sofia’s window couch that faces Camille’s apartment beckons me with an invitation on the other wall of windows.

  Come, it says. Come here and see what I’ve got to show you.

  It’s just a side street view. Except for Camille’s building, there’s mostly old townhouses on this street. Partly hidden by the bare branches of trees. But Sofia pointed out Camille’s apartment earlier, so I crawl across the large sectional couch, just like Sofia described herself when she told me about her writing routine, and prop my back up with pillows. Press my warm feet against the cold glass and imagine the two of them. Writing with each other, separated only by panes of glass and forty feet of air.

  I wish I was part of that.

  I will be part of that.

  Maybe I can sell my cottage and move to the Upper East Side? Be a real trio like we pretend we are online?

  Yes. I’d like that.

  It’s only then that I notice a book on the couch next to me. I pick it up, and lean forward, catching some light outside so I can read the spine.

  The Great Gatsby.

  It’s a first printing, I know that immediately. Bound in navy blue leather with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s name embossed in gold gilt over blue on the front-side of the cover, I’d recognize it anywhere because I’ve wanted one for years but could never justify the expenditure for an item that was nothing but pure sentimental indulgence.

  God, how the three of us loved that story in school. We read it incessantly that year.

  Why did we do that?

  Oh, God! How did I forget? This was the book Connor used to read to us. It wasn’t just the dictionary and grocery lists, was it? So stupid that I forgot.

  Jesus, how I used to love hearing him read this story. His voice was perfect. So magic.

  I would just get lost in that time. The art deco, the giant mansions, the opulent parties… all of it.

  But I put it aside because I didn’t come in here to read someone else’s story. I came in to capture my own.

  So I grab my pen, half-hidden in a pocket attached to the inside cover of my notebook, and begin to write.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - CONNOR

  I realize I’ve had this dream before. Kiera is there. All of us are there. Me, and Hayes, and Camille, and Sofia, and Bennett.

  But the thing that’s different this time around is that Louise is there.

  She was there. But for some reason she feels like an interloper in this dream. Like she’s so out of place in this dream, I dream myself up some annoyance. Try to follow her. Tell her to leave. But the dream does that dream thing and morphs into a party, and for some reason I’m really short in this dream so I
’m like waist-high to everyone. And no one sees me as I push my way through the crowd, and duck under the serving trays of waiters, and try not to notice that I don’t recognize a single person anymore.

  Everyone’s a stranger.

  But I see Louise through a parting of the crowd. She’s wearing a very flashy gold dress, the kind made up of little pieces of metal that look like scales and reflect everything back at you, only it’s blurry and dark. Like shadows dancing across her gold body.

  And she ducks into a hallway that becomes the twisted passageways of Hayes’ mansion. And then Louise is gone and Emily is there, putting a single finger up to her lips and whispering, “Shhhhhhh.”

  So I stop and open my mouth to ask her where Louise went, but I don’t think I have a mouth anymore. Because I can’t talk.

  Before I can freak out about this dream turning into a nightmare, Emily says, “I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t do it.”

  And then Louise is there in her dancing-shadows gold dress, saying, “She did do it, Connor. And you need to believe that or bad things will start happening.”

  I wake up to a phone buzzing. Sweaty. So hot. And tangled up in the covers. Wondering where the fuck I am when I look outside and see the wrong view though the glass.

  The phone buzzes again.

  I sit up, remembering. “Kiera?” I whisper. Because the other side of the bed is empty and last night is coming back to me now. I glance at the phone and see Camille’s name and a short message. I need to talk to you. Now.

  I’m at Sofia’s. I’m in bed with Kiera and she’s gone.

  I don’t feel panic at this, more curious about where she went.

  The bathroom, I decide. But the bathroom door is open and she’s clearly not in there. So I get up, pull on my pants, and go out into the hallway.

  I can still smell the faint scent of dinner as I walk down the hallway and stop, peering into the living room.

  I’m about to go check that way when I hear the tell-tale sound of a page being turned coming from the office at the other end of this hallway.

  I find her there, belly-down on a couch facing a large window, notebook positioned in a beam of light coming in from the twinkling city outside, writing furiously.

  “Hey,” I say, walking into the room.

  She looks over her shoulder, then gets up on her knees, and turns to me. “Sorry. I just wanted to write some things down about the last few days so I don’t forget. Did I wake you up?”

  “No, I had a weird fucking dream.”

  “Want a piece of paper so you can write it down?”

  This makes me happy. Kiera, late-night journaler. Always ready to take on the world with her pen.

  She always had a notebook in her hand back in school. I can remember seeing her around campus in the years that came before that year, sitting under a tree writing furiously, like she is now.

  Other people did that too. Camille and Sofia did. But they did it in a group. There was always a posse around them. Kiera was a loner before we became friends in senior year.

  And she always had weird journals too. Handmade ones from old book covers. The one I remember most vividly was The Great Gatsby. She left it unattended once and I picked it up, so interested in what she felt the need to scribble down so furiously. Like she was gonna forget some detail that makes all the difference.

  Like she was doing just before I interrupted her.

  “Can I see it?” I ask, walking over to the couch. She scoots over, making room for me, so I crawl onto the large square sectional and join her in the middle.

  “You mean, can you read it?”

  “No. I mean, sure. I’d be thrilled to read it. But I just want to look at that book. You make these, right?”

  She looks down at the notebook in her hand, then back up at me. “Yeah. You like it?”

  “They’re beautiful. I remember you always had these handmade notebooks in school. I’ve always wanted to just… sit down with one and study it.”

  “My words?”

  “Those too,” I say, feeling like I just said this. She laughs. “But the books, Kiera. You make really beautiful books.”

  She looks at the journal again, trying to see my perspective, I think. Then she shrugs. “My mom was always making these. We have this library—well, we had.” And then she looks up, like she’s thinking. “I don’t even know if it’s still there.”

  I have a lot of things to say about what’s happening with her mother’s estate and that house, but this is not the time.

  “But anyway,” she continues, “I’ve been making these notebooks my whole life. You can look at it.”

  She hands it to me and I hold it. Reverently. The hardback cover has been altered. Hell, everything has been altered. But the cover is some old edition of some romance book, I think. There’s a flowery woman on the front in muted, faded colors, which is original. But the title is clearly a small piece of printed paper glued above it. “Things I Thought I Saw,” I say.

  “Yeah, it’s not a story. It’s just… you know. A diary, I guess. Just scraps of days. Things I might want to remember later.”

  I open it up, with no intention of reading her private thoughts, just interested in how she put this all together. None of the pages match. Some are made up of thin parchment. Some are old, yellowed accounting ledgers. Some are even worn, yellow envelopes that you use for inter-office mail. “It’s really nice.”

  “Sofia loves them too. I’m gonna go home on Sunday and grab a few extras I have to give to her and Camille for Christmas.”

  “You’re going home?” I ask, closing the book and setting it aside. But it bumps into another book. “What’s this?” I ask, picking up the other book.

  “Can you believe Sofia has a first fucking edition of The Great Gatsby and she reads it?” She laughs. Shakes her head. “I mean, what the fuck is wrong with her?”

  “This?” I ask, turning the book in my hand. “How do you know it’s a first?”

  “I know,” Kiera says. “I’m obsessed with this book. Like I have about sixteen different copies at my cottage. But not this one.” She laughs again.

  “Hmmm,” I say. “I think I knew that.”

  “Yeah?”

  I nod. “Yeah, because you had one of these journals back in school. You wrote in it all the time. And the cover was a lot like this.”

  “No,” Kiera says. “No. No, no, no. No way. I never made a journal of The Great Gatsby. My writer’s heart would shrivel and die if I tore up a copy of that book to make a journal. And I certainly never owned this edition.”

  I shrug. “It must’ve been a later edition. But it definitely had this,” I say, pointing to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s name in gilded gold on the front.

  “That’s impossible,” Kiera says. “I just… I didn’t own a copy. And they don’t make them like this. There is no other edition like this. And anyway, like I said, I’d never cut up a Gatsby book.”

  I just stare at her for a few seconds. Because how is it possible we have two totally different memories? I know for sure. For. Sure. That book I picked up back in school had this cover. It most definitely said The Great Gatsby on it.

  But she’s telling me I’m wrong.

  “You’re mixing it all up, Con. That’s all. You used to read Gatsby out loud to us that year, remember?”

  “What?” I shake my head. “No. I never read this book. I almost failed my American Lit class in freshman year because I read the CliffsNotes version before the final exam. I barely even remember what it’s about.”

  Kiera laughs. “You’re stupid. You read this to us all the time. You probably just never looked at the cover.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, so confused. “You’d think I’d remember a guy called Gatsby.”

  We stare at each other for a few moments. And I don’t know what she’s thinking… but I’m wondering, What the fuck? How did this whole Gatsby thing get so turned around?

  “Can I read this one?” I ask, not sure why
I’m asking since it’s not her book. But very sure why I want to read it. I need to see if I remember anything. “I swear, I never read this book. Out loud or otherwise.”

  She sucks in a breath of air. Thinks about this for a few moments. Then says, “If you’re very careful you can read the first page. But no more than that.”

  I can’t help myself, I laugh.

  “I’m serious. I don’t think you understand what this book is.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I say. “Promise.”

  “OK,” she says. “Then read it out loud.” She stretches her body out, long legs bumping into me, cold bare feet tucking themselves under my knee, as she positions her forehead right up against the window and looks out at the building across the street. “But just one page.”

  So I begin…

  “‘In my younger and more vulnerable years…’”

  Kiera sighs, but I keep going, logging her reactions as I narrate the story for her. She sighs a lot, curls her body up—I miss her cold feet when she does that—slides both hands under one cheek, and closes her eyes as I continue. Already one hundred percent certain that this was not the book I used to read to them back in school.

  She doesn’t stop me when I turn the first page. Or the second, or the fifteenth. In fact, we’re almost on chapter two when she sits up and places both her hands on the window, looking out into the night.

  “Do you see that?” she says.

  I stop reading and look out the window. “That light?”

  “Yeah. Did you know that’s Camille’s apartment? What time is it? I wonder what she’s doing up?”

  I look around the office and spy a digital clock. “Three forty-seven.” Then I see a figure walking around. I put down the book and crawl across the sectional so I’m right up next to the window with Kiera. “Is that Bennett?”

  Kiera huffs out some air. “I bet they’d be pissed if they knew we were spying on them.”

  “Holy shit, I kinda knew that Sofia and Camille lived this close, but I never imagined they could see each other from across the street. It’s weird. And sorta kinky too.”