She was still wearing her sunglasses and I pulled them off, revealing steel-blue eyes. Tib pulled her shirt over her head and pressed her bare skin against me, soft breasts and hard nipples pressing against my T-shirt. She kissed me, hard, and I was reaching up for more when she pulled away and closed her mouth over my breast through my shirt. She bit, and I squirmed, as she yanked the buttons on my fly open one by one. Sweat was rolling off of both of us, and the temperature was rising.
After a moment, Tib slipped off of me onto the bed, flopping back beneath a ceiling fan that did little besides stir the hot air.
“Jesus. I think it may actually be too hot to fuck,” she laughed, closing her eyes.
I let mine close, too, just for a minute, and when I opened them again, the light from the window had grown long and low and Tib was curled beside me, fast asleep. I spooned against her, and she drew my hand over her shoulder, tucking it against her breasts.
I woke after dark to find Tib coming out of the bathroom, dressed in her leather pants and white shirt and rubbing a towel through damp hair that hung in curls around her face.
“Hey,” she smiled, tossing the towel onto the bed. She grabbed a pot of pomade from the dresser, smoothing her hair flat. One little curl hung down in the middle of her forehead. “I’m starving,” she said. “Feel like getting a bite in the bar?”
I had other ideas, but my stomach growled audibly, joining the thumping bass from the club below that meant it was already after nine. We headed down and Tib ordered burgers and fries. We were just finishing up when I heard tongue-clucking behind me.
“I saw Nellie still outside and I was worried about you,” said Greg as I swiveled around. He gave me his best disapproving look. “Thought you’d been kidnapped out of the parking lot.”
“She was,” said Tib. “But I brought her back.”
Pete reached around Greg’s shoulder and grabbed a Frenchfry. “Is that anything like throwing a fish back if it’s too small?” He laughed and dodged the fry I threw at him.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tib, winking at me. “She looks like a keeper to me.”
Greg gave a dramatic sigh. “Ohhh-kay, then. We’ll be over here,” he said as he dragged Pete off to the dance floor.
Tib popped the last fry in her mouth and grinned, hopping off of her stool and dragging me after them. We danced until closing, dripping with sweat and out of breath. There was no sign of Bethany.
“You’re good,” shouted Tib over the music as we pushed toward the lobby. “I have this theory that people fuck—” She laughed, realizing that her voice was suddenly much louder away from the dance floor. She pulled me close and I looked up into her storm-blue eyes. “I have this theory,” she repeated. “That people fuck like they dance.”
I was feeling pretty bold after a few drinks and a dance buzz. “I’d be happy to help you test that,” I said. “For science.”
Tib pressed me up against the side of the banister and put her palms against the wood, her leather-clad knee rubbing hard between my legs. “I’m very dedicated to science,” she said, kissing my throat. “But didn’t you say you worked in the morning?”
I sighed, playing with her belt buckle. “Yeah, I do.”
“What time do you get off? You know what I mean,” she laughed.
“Six,” I said.
“What if I meet you for dinner? Or will you be too tired?”
I smiled. “I think I can manage.”
My shift at the bowling alley seemed interminable after only a few hours of sleep. Days weren’t so bad: leagues in the morning wanting breakfast at the snack bar, a small lunch crowd, and a few beer drinkers in the afternoon. But at 4:00, the manager called. Her two-year-old had an ear infection and she couldn’t leave him with the sitter.
Tib was understanding when I called. “Why don’t I come by and keep you company?”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “It’s pretty boring.”
“As long as I don’t have to wear somebody else’s smelly shoes.”
“Not unless you plan to bowl.”
“There is almost zero chance of that happening,” said Tib.
She came by around eight and spent the evening entertaining me by mimicking the bowlers and reading explicit personals from the men-seeking-men section. Her favorite game was “anything you can do, I can do better,” taking the ads as a personal challenge. She dragged me to the bathroom periodically to try “Looking to get my holes worked over—no chitchat” and “Sit on my lap—I jerk you off.”
With Tib’s distraction, my shift was over in no time, but the alley was open until midnight, and by the time I was done with the cleanup and the cash drawer, it was after 1:00 a.m.
“Who bowls until midnight on a Monday?” I moaned as I closed up. “Who does that?”
“And you have to come back in seven hours,” said Tib, kissing my neck as I locked the doors.
I looked up at her, silhouetted against the bright moon. “And I just got a text message from Donna saying her kid has a fever of a hundred and three and she needs me to cover her shift again tomorrow night.”
“So I’ll just come and bother you some more.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“What else am I going to do? I’ve been here since Friday, and I’ve pretty much exhausted everything there is to do here in three days. There’s a reason I left home in the first place. That, and the people bowling until midnight.” She hooked her finger through my belt loop and pulled me close. “Besides,” she smirked. “I have a feeling it’ll pay off.”
Tib ended up spending three nights keeping me company at the bowling alley, until little Jared had finally gotten some antibiotics. Mercifully, Donna took over my next two shifts, and I slept for over twelve hours, with the promise of spending Friday with Tib. I was beginning to get used to her company.
Tib announced she was taking me somewhere out of town. I told her that at no point during the day would I be perching naked on her lap on a rock. Tib assured me that she had other plans for me. We got on her bike and Tib headed north, and up into the mountains. The trip took a few hours over twisting roads, and I was glad to be off of the bike by the time we reached the top.
“Ever been skiing up here?” asked Tib as she pulled a thick, fleece blanket from her saddle bag.
“Skiing,” I said. “In the middle of summer.”
Tib grinned. “Something like that.” She took my hand and half-dragged me up the last quarter mile from the parking lot to the lodges I had assumed were closed.
“What are we doing?” I protested. “There’s nothing up here.”
“Wait here.” Tib darted into the one open café, returning after a moment with two rectangles of paper. “Lift tickets,” she grinned.
Twenty minutes later, we were rising over the mountain, the only ones on the lift. I laughed as Tib tucked the blanket over our laps. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring a parka.”
“It’s windy,” she said. “I don’t want you to catch a cold.” There was little danger of that; under the blanket, she was making me quite warm.
Tib had unbuttoned my jeans and slipped her hand down my panties, first just cupping her firm hand around me, and then teasing me open.
“Stop it,” I protested, wanting her to do nothing of the kind. Thankfully, Tib ignored me.
She rubbed her middle finger against my clit and then kissed me to keep me quiet as she buried the finger slowly inside me. I was wriggling forward to meet her, heedless of the fact that we were suspended hundreds of feet above the ground, clenching my pussy tight around her finger with a jolt when I realized it. We reached the apex, twofold, and I twisted against her thrusting finger with a shout as my cunt throbbed and shuddered, no longer caring if anyone heard. She pulled out and sucked the juice off her finger as I relaxed against her while the lift rounded the corner and headed back down.
“It’s actually a really nice view, if you’d been paying attention,” Tib teased. “I drag a girl all
the way up to the top of the world and shell out money for a ride, and all she does is close her eyes and moan.”
When we headed back down the mountain, Tib turned off onto a private drive after less than half a mile. I had to wait until we wound to the end and arrived in a small village of summer homes and cabins before I found out what Tib was up to.
“My family’s place,” she said as we dismounted in front of a two-story cabin nearly hidden from the road by pine and wildflowers.
Inside, I barely had time to take in the surroundings before Tib had pulled me over to the thick rug and started pulling clothes off of me. I helped her in her mission, unbuttoning her shirt as she yanked at my pants, and pulling her pants down just far enough to get my hand inside them as I closed my mouth over a nipple as hard as a diamond. Tib rolled me over and tilted her pelvis against my mouth and I sucked her clit between my teeth with my fingers inside her powerful cunt, warm and damp and piquant as mulled cider.
I buried my face in her gingery scent, moaning as she moaned, wetter as she got wetter, and almost came as she came. Tib arched back and tightened her muscles as she let out a howl, fucking my mouth with her pussy while I held on to her ass, and whispering, “Sadie, Sadie,” as she softened and collapsed into an exhausted heap beside me.
After we’d curled up before the empty fireplace, stroking and kissing and nuzzling together, Tib divested herself of the rest of her clothing and then dragged herself away from me laughing though I tried to hold her down. After a quick trip to the bathroom, she disappeared into the kitchen and made us sandwiches, and I pulled a blanket around me and checked out the place while she was busy.
“Is this your mom and dad?” I asked, picking up a picture of a couple on the mantel.
Tib popped her head around the doorway. “Oh. Yeah. Don’t look at those. I look awful.”
“Where are you?” I asked, surveying the other pictures. I saw a family shot with a boy and a much younger version of a long-haired Tib before she came up behind me and got my attention off of pictures and onto the real, live Tib before me.
Tib scrounged up a paper from somewhere and we lay on the rug eating our sandwiches and reading men’s personals.
“‘Discreet, masculine boy seeks stern daddy for discipline,’” read Tib as I played footsie with her, legs crossed in the air behind us. “Well, discreet, I don’t know about,” she laughed. “But what about it, little boy? I bet you’re naughty.”
I stuck out my tongue.
“Keep that up,” said Tib, “and I’ll find a use for it.” She glanced at the paper as if she was ignoring me. “Hmm, this one would make an excellent complement. ‘Your cock, my mouth. Bisexual bottom looking for a fuckbuddy.’” Tib pushed me over on my back and climbed over me. “Yeah, I think this is a good one, little boy. You want this, don’t you?” She stroked an invisible cock above my face. “Not bisexual, of course. But cocksucking fuckbuddy I can do.”
My stomach twisted into a sudden, sick knot. I shouldn’t push it now, I thought. Leave it alone. But out of my mouth came, “I’m bi.”
Tib froze in midstroke. “Wow. You sure know how to kill a mood.” She swung her leg off of me and sat down hard on the rug, hugging her knees in a tight, impassable gesture.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting up. “I didn’t want to hide anything from you. Why is it such a big deal? I’m not seeing anyone else.”
Tib laughed harshly. “It’s not who you’re seeing now, it’s who you could see.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t monogamous—”
“I don’t give a fuck about monogamy, Sadie. You could walk away at any moment and disappear into the safe, acceptable world of being straight.”
“No, I couldn’t,” I said, feeling tears on my cheeks, though I hadn’t realized I was crying. “You don’t just get up one day and decide to be straight. That’s not how it works. That’s called lying.”
“It’s called bisexual.”
I felt liked she’d punched me.
“Pete is bi,” I said. “He and Greg have been together for ten years. I’ve seen plenty of people leave each other for the same sex while they’ve been together.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t tomorrow,” said Tib. “I couldn’t trust someone who might leave for the opportunity to live a straight life. It would be like a kick in the teeth. You can’t understand what it is to be a real dyke. He can’t understand what it is to be gay.”
I thought of the time I’d rushed to Greg’s side at the hospital to make sure Pete was still alive after a drunken frat boy had beaten him unconscious for being a fag. I thought of my parents throwing me out for loving a girl and telling me they were ashamed of me and I was no longer their family. It sure seemed to me like we understood.
“I’m sorry, Sadie,” said Tib, watching me cry with her arms folded as if I were a leper she was afraid to touch. “I can’t do this. You’re not family.”
The ride down the mountain was like dying. I could feel her leaning away from my touch as I held on to her. It was dark by the time we reached downtown and the lights of The Club were brilliant pink letters against a black sky over the hotel. I climbed off the bike and Tib sat idling for a moment, staring at her boots while people lined up around us at the door, laughing, kissing, ready to have a good time.
“Tib—”
“It’s like you stabbed me in the gut, Sadie,” she said behind her dark glasses. “And that’s what you’ll never understand. Maybe you should figure out who you are. At least I know who I am.”
Tib rode off into the hot desert night, no sunset to give her exit the finality it needed.
I drove to Greg and Pete’s place and fell sobbing into Greg’s arms when he opened the door. There was nothing I had to say. Greg held me while I cried long into the night, curled on his couch, and Pete brought me Kleenex and chamomile tea. I envied Pete with a bottomless ache.
The boys surprised me at the bowling alley on Monday and came by for lunch to cheer me up. Pete pointed out girls for me on the lanes until I had to laugh.
“Check out that one,” said Pete between his teeth, nodding his head at a redhead coming in, bare arms glistening from the heat. “Very hot.”
“You’re not supposed to notice girls,” said Greg, elbowing Pete as he read the paper at the counter beside him.
“Right. No. She’s absolutely hideous.” Pete winked at me.
“I’m going have to kick you two out if you don’t order something,” I said, smiling in spite of myself.
Greg leaned over the counter. “I’ll have a vodka and tonic.”
“Okay, that’s one Diet Coke.”
Greg sighed as I filled a cup with soda from the dispenser. “I rue the day I told you I was giving up drinking.” He took the soda anyway, punching a straw into the lid and turning back to his paper. He turned a page as he was taking a sip and nearly spit out his drink.
Pete glanced over at the paper. “Holy shit,” he said. “And I mean that.”
“What?” I demanded, leaning over the counter as Pete tried to move the paper away from my view.
I slapped my hand on it and spun it around to face me. It was a local interest piece in the Lifestyles section about the megachurch in the metro area an hour and a half north.
And there, in living color, was Tib—or rather, Thelma Thompkins and the entire Thompkins family: little brother David, the Reverend “Tex” Thompkins, and…Tib’s mom, Alice. Tib might not have been recognizable except for the eyes. She was dressed in a conservative suit dress, loose curls framing her face just below the chin, with a demure smile on her lips. Lips that had been anything but demure with me.
Beside them, a large, billboard-sized sign proudly proclaimed: GRACE CHRISTIAN CHAPEL. WHERE FAMILY IS FIRST.
CHRONIC
Anna Watson
Shara can do it today, I can tell. Lately, she’s been hurting a lot, and when she hurts, she hides behind the swing of her straight black hair and just hangs on until she can lower her
self into a hot bath at the end of the ordeal that living through a day can be. But sometimes, like today, the strong pulse that keeps her going wins out, and she tucks her hair behind her ears and I can feel her eyes on me as I get dressed. She’s been up for an hour or so, stretching, listening to her tapes.
“Stop,” she whispers, and I freeze, catch my breath. I carefully fold my jeans, put them back in the drawer and turn to face her. I’m wearing my muscle shirt and my boxers—not even a soft pack, since I have to go to work later. The way her gaze rakes me up and down, though, I know she sees my dick, my dick that’s always with me, beating right next to my heart, and I’m hard in an instant. This is how it is, this is how it has to be: when Shara can, I must, and when I must, I get hard.
“Down.” I’m on my knees beside the bed before she’s even finished saying the word. Her painted toenails—drops of cerise—appear next to my right knee. I have a hard-on that won’t stop just from looking at them, wondering what she has in mind. I have to go to work. I don’t care.
“Andy,” she murmurs. “Where were you last night?”
An icy chill lodges itself in my belly. She was sleeping when I got in, must have been sleeping for hours. It had been a bad day. I left her drowsy after her bath. I massaged her aching legs and feet. I clear my throat.
“No, don’t.” She strokes my shaved head very lightly, and I shiver, goose bumps breaking out on my arms and legs. “Don’t even try.”
I keep my eyes on her toes—those lollipop toes—and I know she will do what has to be done.
“Stay.” She leaves the room.
It’s cold on the floor. We cracked our window during the night to let in some fresh air; a late autumn breeze snakes across my body and lifts the minute hairs on the back of my neck. My nipples are hard and painful, cold; my nose begins to run. I stretch across to the nightstand for a tissue—she hasn’t told me I couldn’t move. I try to slow my breathing, but my cock is too hard and I’m too afraid of what Shara is going to find out about last night.
When She Was Good Page 4