Give Me Your Answer True

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Did you know what it was?”

  “I knew what they were as a concept, sure, but it’s different when it actually… For a minute you forget and it’s what the fuck just happened?”

  “But you were already jerking off by that point, I guess.”

  He laughed again. “Well that started in like seventh grade.”

  “Lightbulb moment.”

  “Huge moment. Kind of a sad moment because any semblance of intelligence you’ve put together by that point is shot to hell. You get really stupid. All you think about is sex.”

  “Really?”

  “Pretty much, yeah,” he said, laughing softly.

  She loved his smile, loved the shape of it and the flash of his teeth within. Loved how he lolled like a cat under her touch. She pushed up on her elbow, running her hand over his bare chest, hooking a fingertip under the gold chain at his neck. She picked up the tiny fish charm and set it in the hollow of his throat.

  “Would you do it every night?” she asked.

  “Well not every night but…” His head bobbled around. “For a while it becomes part of the shower routine.”

  She laughed. “Convenient.”

  “Easy cleanup.”

  “What would you think about?”

  He shrugged. “Girls.”

  “Girls you knew?”

  “Sometimes. Movie stars. If the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated was out then it was always a hot month.”

  “You don’t mind me asking all these things?”

  “As long as you don’t mind dealing with the answers.” He took her hand and slid it against his erection, making her forget what she was going to ask next.

  Another night in the dark of her room. Erik going down on her, his tongue like velvet, making her turn inside-out. Her hand rested on the side of his face, feeling his mouth work with and against her, the roll and shift of his jaw. Feeling how he made her come. Her heart pounding blood like gold through her veins and the Christmas twinkles blurring into an underwater galaxy. She dropped her hand on his head, holding him still. Catching her breath.

  “What do I taste like?”

  His hands slid up her legs and curled around her hip bones, his cheek on her inner thigh. She could feel his eyelashes against her skin and the damp warmth of his breath.

  “So sweet,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “But not right away. It’s tart in the beginning. The sweet comes after a few minutes.”

  “Which do you like better?”

  “Both,” he said. “I love when my tongue first touches you and you make this sound. And when it goes sweet… I love that, too. And it kind of changes just before you come.”

  “It does?”

  “Yeah. Like I can taste when you’re going to come. I think I can, anyway.” The shape of his smile became mischievous. “You know, six seconds after meeting I wanted to go down on you.”

  “Shut up,” she said, running fingers through his hair.

  “I swear. First time you got close to me and I smelled your skin? I thought, she’s got to be so sweet. It was crazy. I’d never met a girl and immediately thought of doing that.”

  She smiled. “I thought it was every guy’s go-to.”

  “Not mine. But I saw you and it’s what I wanted.”

  “Go to, then.”

  His low laughter soft and cool where she was warm and wet. His tongue slid against her. Curled and coaxed. Her hand in his hair tightened. The lights around the window blurred again. More nights blurred together. More whispered questions blooming in their depths.

  “What’s the best part about getting head?”

  “Everything,” he said.

  She’d gone down on boys before, but never with this kind of greedy ardor. She went for Erik with her passion ablaze. Laid on her stomach between his legs, up close and personal as she undid his belt, worked the snap of his jeans through the buttonhole and slowly tugged his zipper down. She didn’t want to miss a thing. Not the heat of his skin or the soapy musk smell of him under his clothes or the line of soft brown hair extending down from his belly button and under the waist of his dark blue boxer shorts. How he dug in his heels and lifted up his hips as she worked shorts and jeans down his legs. The sharp inward tug of his breath. The clink of the charms on his necklace as his head fell this way then that on the pillow.

  “God,” he said as she ran her tongue along him. His body stopped and started, air caught up tight in his chest and his shoulders twisting down into the mattress.

  “Your mouth feels amazing,” he whispered.

  She pushed him along the boulevard of pleasure. He put his hands over his face then pulled them back through his hair. They tumbled onto the covers, open and helpless as she pulled him over and over into the warm wet behind her teeth.

  “It’s gonna make me come,” he whispered, his warning fingertips touching her forehead.

  “I know,” she said, taking his hand and gently putting it down on the mattress.

  His voice was a keen blade slicing her name from the air one last time. Then his head fell back, his throat bared, the charms of his necklace sliding. The fingers of one hand gripping the sheets, the other hand curled into the dark as he came and she caught him.

  After a minute he reached down, took her under the arms and dragged her up to him. Folded her into his elbows, gasping and shaking. “I swear…”

  She put her fingertips on his lips. She was his everything at that moment and she didn’t want any more words. She wanted the tremble of his limbs and the choppy breaths that gradually grew smoother. The slight lifts of his head off her chest and the attempts to speak, only to put his head back down again. She held him. Her tongue tingling. The skin of his bare back warm and gorgeous under her hands. His tight, hard body growing soft and still.

  THE NIGHT OF HER EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY, Erik gave her a set of Russian nesting dolls, Matryoshka, which she lined up along the edge of her dresser. Fat round sentinels watching as she gifted Erik to herself, to her history, to her life.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Are you?”

  “I can barely breathe and I don’t want it to hurt you. I’m not scared but I’m shaking pretty bad here.”

  It made no sense—she should’ve been the one trembling with nerves. Instead she was undressing with a calm, steady burn. A candle inside the bell jar of his love. “Even if it hurts, it’s still ours,” she whispered. “I want you nervous. It tells me you care.”

  Her hands moved over his skin. As they kissed and touched, she felt the tremors in his body subside. Anxious or not, he was hard for her, bucking and straining as she unzipped him and helped him out of his clothes. Only the littlest hitch within his breathing gave him away.

  Then she was sitting on her bed and he was kneeling between her calves, tearing open the foil of a condom. She took it from him. “Show me how,” she said. “I’m gonna be doing this a lot.”

  Laughter in his breathing now. The smile she loved shining on her head as his hands guided hers. “Not much to it. Just leave a little bit at the top here. Then roll it…”

  “Can you still feel after it’s on?”

  “Don’t worry about me. The less I feel the better. I have no idea how long I’m gonna be able to make this last.”

  “I have nothing to go by,” she said, lying back. “Come inside me.”

  As he crawled along her body, hard and intent, a wave of adrenaline splashed her chest. All at once she wasn’t quite so fearless. Not sure where to put her arms or legs. Green and trembling in the shadow of his experience and needing him to partner her through this unfamiliar ballet.

  “Now I’m shaking,” she said, searching for his eyes, which had never led her wrong.

  His hand was so soft on her face. His gaze steady and strong, filled with tiny gold lights. “This is the best thing I’ve ever done,” he said.

  “Show me.”

  “Put your arms up around my neck.
Hold onto me.”

  She wound her wrists behind his head. He dropped down on one elbow, kissing her, the other hand reaching confidently between them and finding the way. He started to push into her, his hand now sliding under the small of her back, tilting her up to him. “Hold tight. I’ll go slow.”

  She let her breath out and opened to him, fully expecting pain. He moved further up in her and she felt it, thick and warm, filling her up. Her mouth fell apart at the sensation, stunned. She knew he fit her but she had no idea he would fit her. She didn’t know her body would give way like this, make room and then cleave to him, letting him in deep. It was tight. It stretched her. But it didn’t hurt. It was Erik inside her and she made a noise she’d never made before in her life.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  He drew back. “Is it hurting you?”

  She pulled him down and in. “No,” she said. “No, it’s good.”

  “Is it?” he said, sliding his hands underneath her back.

  “Oh my God.” Her knees inched up his hips. “It feels so good.”

  It felt too good. As the blur of pleasure drew into solid, sharper focus for her, it began to crumble through Erik’s hands. She arched up and he moaned. She moved along with him and he pressed her still, begging her not so fast, not so much, it was too much.

  “I can’t hold it,” he said. “I’m gonna come so bad.”

  “Go,” she finally said. “Just go. We have all night.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Tasting this new power of hers, she ran her mouth up his neck toward his ear and pushed him over the edge. “Let me see you come. Come in me. Fill me up.”

  A stifled, strangled cry in his throat and he was gone. He clutched at her and came, a writhing, grinding dervish. Gripping her so hard the charms of his necklace dug into her skin. She clung to him, wrapping him in arms and legs, mouth open against his temple as he came down. His body shivered. He laughed a little. Then he lay still, shoulders rising and falling as his breathing smoothed out.

  He picked up his head and looked at her. “Don’t cry,” he said.

  She touched her face, surprised at the tears. “I’m just happy,” she said.

  When he rolled off her, the condom was stained with blood. They both stared at it, a little confused.

  “You’re not hurt?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “Not at all.”

  He went on staring curiously, then he dipped a finger inside her and wrote his name on her leg. In her blood.

  And she was his.

  The second time was longer, their bodies more relaxed, and afterward they fell asleep in a mess of limbs. The third time, in the wee hours before dawn, she rolled another condom on him and climbed on top.

  “Is this all right,” she said and he nodded, eyes wide, hands coming up to cup her breasts and slide up and over her shoulders, down her arms.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, palms spreading wide across her leg muscles.

  She slid her hand between their bodies and guided him inside, kept her hand there so she could feel him moving along her fingers.

  “I like this,” she said. “I like you under me.”

  “Christ, I could look up at you forever…”

  He had a tight leash on his desire now. He sprawled on his back like a god, letting her have at him. Taking the weight she leaned on him, watching as she tilted her hips this way and that. Confident in her body and secure in his love, she experimented with how he felt and fit inside her, rising up or leaning back or curling down.

  “It’s so good,” he said, his eyes full of the sunrise. “I knew it would be.”

  They made love for a long time, kissing, touching and whispering as the windows filled with morning. She felt herself dissolve and melt into his body, felt her awareness flow back and forth between his body and hers.

  It really is one, she thought. It’s one. It’s all one. We are one. We are meant. We were born. I am him and he is me and we are us.

  “I love you in me,” she said. “Making us. I love us.”

  His hands reached up, plunged into her hair and brought her down to kiss him.

  “I love us,” he whispered against her lips. Over and over. He was beyond calculated, conscious thought. He was babbling, a sing-song of impassioned feeling filling her mouth and flooding her throat and chest.

  “I love you, Dais. I love it I love us I love you…”

  ERIK’S HOUSE WAS A SIMPLE CAPE COD in one of the suburbs of Rochester. Homey and cluttered with a netless basketball hoop over the garage door. The downstairs was wall-to-wall carpet—a luxury for Daisy, who grew up on wood floors. The kitchen was open and sunny, the heart of the house. A banquette table was built under the corner windows and Daisy sat here with Erik and his brother while his mother cooked dinner.

  Christine Fiskare was honey blonde and olive-skinned, with Erik’s brown eyes and a husky voice. She was tall and broad-shouldered—besides being an accomplished pianist, she was also a competitive swimmer in high school.

  Peter was dark blond as well, with blue eyes. Daisy thought Erik was guarded, but next to Peter’s closed-fist of a face, Erik was an open palm. Peter observed the world from a private and fortified fortress and no amount of friendly overture could make him come down until he was good and ready. Daisy sat quietly and let him get used to her, all the while covertly watching him under her eyelashes.

  Pete was completely deaf in his left ear and a hearing aid allowed a bit of sound into the right. He wore the device at school and soccer practice and chucked it off as soon as he came home, preferring to divine the world through his keen sight and the assistance of his guide dog, Drew.

  “He can pick shit up through his body,” Erik said. “Like a giant antenna. I’m not kidding—he can be in his room and still tell the difference between me walking down the hall and my mother walking down the hall. He says the house vibrates differently around us.”

  Christine made pulled pork for dinner, and her face was a mixture of pride and despair as she watched her boys eat sandwich after sandwich and bicker over the last handful of fries on the baking tray. She rarely called them by name: Erik was this one and Peter was that one. Collectively they were these two.

  “These two,” she said to Daisy. “Keeping them fed keeps me just above the poverty line. I grew up with four brothers, all football players, and I have no idea how my parents didn’t go broke.”

  “Your parents are broke,” Erik said, spooning more coleslaw on his thrice-emptied plate.

  “This one,” Christine said. “Grew four inches in eighth grade. If he wasn’t eating or complaining about his sore knees, he was sleeping. Weekends at two in the afternoon, I’d find him still in bed.” She took the empty bowl of slaw to the sink and ran water into it.

  “Eighth grade,” Erik said, tapping the tines of his fork on his teeth. “Yeah, I remember that year I really liked my sleep.”

  Christine continued talking over the running water. Without a break in eating, Pete nudged his brother’s arm. Erik put down his fork to translate into sign language.

  “You have three fears when you’re a parent: something’s hurting them, or they’re destroying something or, the worst, you don’t know where they are. Whenever I found Erik in bed sleeping at two in the afternoon, I’d think, well, he’s not hurting anything. Nobody’s hurting him. And I know exactly where he is. And I’d shut the door and be happy.”

  Daisy was only half-listening as she watched Erik’s hands. She knew he was fluent in ASL. When asked he’d shown her signs or how to finger-spell a word—mostly assorted curses, which were fun to learn. But she’d never seen him actively converse. Now she stared with bald fascination as he spoke and signed simultaneously, his strong fingers molding and shaping the air. It was more than a language, it was a highly skilled art form, this ability to listen to words and transpose into gesture. To interpret.

  He’s dancing with his hands.

  Christine finished talking but
Erik continued to sign. Pete’s mouth cracked in silent laughter as he picked up and pegged a sandwich roll at his brother. Daisy stared, taking in the composition of Peter sitting with his guide dog on one side and Erik on the other. One who alerted him to sound and another who translated it. Erik was fending off Pete’s punches with one hand and rapidly spelling with the other, and their silent connection reflected the kitchen light like sun glinting off a sword. They were bonded by steel, these brothers, an affinity made all the more stronger by its lack of noise.

  Pete looked over at Daisy with an eye roll and a palm-up sign with his thumb and index finger touching.

  “Asshole,” she said. “First sign Erik taught me.”

  A flash of wickedness lit up Pete’s eyes. He signed something to Erik, finishing with what looked like the universal gesture for jerking off.

  “Milkshake,” Daisy said. “It was the second.”

  Christine clicked her tongue. “Have you taught her any useful signs, Byron Erik?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Just all the curse words.”

  “They’re useful,” Daisy said. She looked at Pete, who seemed on the verge of saying something, but then his blue eyes ducked away shyly. He rarely spoke.

  “Doesn’t want to,” Erik told her once. “He will if he has to. If he’s upset or in danger. Or even if he’s super excited about something. But after my father left, he pretty much went electively mute.”

  Later on, Daisy was watching close-captioned Late Night with the two brothers. Several times she put out a hand to pet Drew, Pete’s beautiful Golden retriever. The dog ignored her. After Letterman’s monologue, Pete got up, yawning, and left, smacking one hand against Erik’s raised one in farewell.

  Pete caught Daisy’s eye and over his brother’s head he made the sign for milkshake.

  “Goodnight,” Daisy said. And made the sign for asshole.

  Pete’s smile flashed in the dark.

  “Nigh, Days,” he said.

  The voice was pitched high and scratchy from disuse, but the words were unmistakable. Erik turned his head in surprise as Pete headed up the stairs, the jingle of Drew’s collar in his wake.

  “Damn,” Erik said. “That one never says goodnight to this one.”