“I’m just repeating what you already said.” Like couldn’t have anything to do with what I was allowing to happen between us.
“Which means you admit it?”
I didn’t say anything. Most people would be melting like a cherry Popsicle on a hot day, but I was trying to stay frozen. It was the only way I could keep myself in check.
“Cat got your tongue?” He moved away from the motorcycle and walked over to me. “Or have I got it?” I could feel his breath on my face. He could have got my tongue. I wanted his.
My heart was banging in my neck, pulsing in my face. His breathing matching beat for beat.
“You’re mixing up your metaphors,” I said.
“We can talk similes,” he mused, “if t’s better for you. As I said, we can talk like.”
“No we can’t,” I said. “This is about sex only.” I scanned his lips, the color of the tiniest piece of sunset. I tried not to think about how they felt when they were on mine. It was like they had been there before, almost familiar, but also new each time.
“Say whatever you want,” he said, his glance lazily landing on my face. “It’s clear you’re addicted to me.”
“You’re crazy,” I said, but we were still so close. Why didn’t I move back? Why didn’t I move forward? It was like the warm night air surrounding us held me there.
“You’re the one lurking outside my place of work.” He paused. “I mean, if we’re throwing around crazy.”
“Addicted is a strong word too,” I said, though I wondered if it was almost right. Maybe not to him necessarily, but to the way I felt when I was with him—the freedom, the danger, the lust, and the part I wanted to ignore, the comfort in knowing he knew me.
Well, aside from the Candy part.
“Pick a better one, teach.”
“Interested,” I said, watching his lips perk up. “Not”— I paused— “interested in, just interested, as in curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” he said.
“Was that before or after he got your tongue?”
“Your tongue,” he whispered.
He was lucky he was as hot as he was. He could get away with lines like that. I thought he might kiss me. I could tell he wanted to, but I could also tell he wanted me to make a move; clearly he didn’t believe I had the courage to keep to the arrangement I was asking for.
We stood there listening to the cars go by on the street beside us, the laughing and conversations of people walking toward Buzzers, the door dinging as they walked inside. We listened to the sound of our breathing, waiting for the wind or something stronger to push us together.
“You want a ride home?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I was confused. I told him I wanted to have sex with him and he wanted to drive me back to my apartment?
Maybe he wanted to have sex in my apartment. I guess that could be okay as long as Amanda wasn’t home.
“You want to stand out here all night?” he joked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, making it sound like a joke even though it actually wasn’t. I could have. I would have.
“You do understand you have a split personality, right?”
I did. Of course I did. I just couldn’t believe this guy I barely knew could see it so plainly. Maybe it was because he was the only guy who had seen and seemed to want both sides of me: the studious, serious Candice on the outside, the sultry, sex-kitten Candy on the inside.
And the never-ending fight between them.
“Just get on the motorcycle,” he said. I guess he wasn’t in the mood for the two of them to figure it out.
I guess I wasn’t, either, because I did.
We rode like we had to the restaurant. The difference this time was I let myself hold him as tightly as one of Candy’s characters would have dared, which was tight, as close as condensation sticking to glass. My chest was one with his back. The vibrations of the motorcycle beating through his legs, up to his waist and chest, and then passing to me, a rumble in my rib cage, a throb in my abdomen that made me hold on even tighter. That made me lay my cheek against his neck, breathing in his scent—coffee and salt.
“I don’t think you’re in any danger of falling this time,” he yelled into the wind.
Little does he know.
It didn’t take us long to reach my apartment building. He parked on the street out front.
“Should I come inside?” he asked, his hand floating over the starter.
“Okay,” I said. I guess we were really going through with this; body on, emotions off.
He pocketed his key and we walked together through my parking lot, the space between us tentative, tremendous, all the way to my front door.
We reached the porch and I kissed him long and deep so there was no need for words. His hands were in my hair and mine were around his neck. In the space between us there was nothing but us, nothing but wanting, nothing but ignition.
I pulled back and whispered, “I’ll go in first and let you in through my window. It’s the first one on the left side.”
“You’re kidding,” he replied.
“My roommate can’t see you,” I explained.
“What if she already has?” he asked, indicating the porch light over us.
“Her bedroom’s all the way in the back,” I explained, but he was right, it was careless espionage at best.
“So is that what this is going to be? I sneak in, wham, bam, thank you, Mr. Ma’am. Then I sneak out?”
“I guess,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about how crappy it sounded. I needed to keep everything between us physical, but treating him that way made me feel like an ass.
He stepped back and searched my face, his brown eyes filled with the kind of disappointment that when it’s directed at you makes your whole body go glacial, your whole being empty.
He sighed and walked back toward his motorcycle.
“You’re leaving?” I yelled in disbelief. One of Candy’s male characters wouldn’t have left. He would have dutifully climbed in the window, climbed into bed, and done anything else his heroine had asked of him. Maybe James didn’t want to be just a character, just a body doing what I told him to.
Maybe he understood while what I was asking for would keep us safe, it would never be enough.
“That’s all I feel like expressing tonight,” he said.
Candy wanted me to stop him, but Candice just watched as he started his motorcycle and flew away down the street.
Chapter Sixteen
I was writing on the couch when Mandy got home the next day, putting all my frustration with Candice into my Candy story. The main character and the James character had just had sex on the kitchen counter while they were making dinner and then in the shower while they were cleaning up afterward.
If I could just admit to James that my feelings for him were more than physical, he would have let me do all that and everything to him. He would have let me bring dinner into the shower.
Why couldn’t I let myself?
Because there was a lot more to it than just that James was my freaking student.
“Ooh,” Mandy said when she found me writing in the living room. “Fun stuff or school stuff?” She plopped down next to me and crossed her legs.
Her hair was wet, which meant she must have just been getting back from a dive. I envied her ability to swim into the depths and escape. The perfect silence and stillness where the noise and confusion of the world was replaced with ripples of light, coral like jeweled crowns, and bright blue water going on to as close to forever as any of us get to see.
My only escape was in words and when they weren’t doing what I wanted them to, it wasn’t much of one. At least I didn’t have to worry about that when I was writing as Candy.
Well, I hadn’t had to.
Candy’s stories had been an escape. Until I made the one guy I couldn’t escape the star of them.
“Fun stuff,” I said.
“Doesn’t seem l
ike it,” Mandy said, looking at me skeptically. “How can you not love a job where sex is considered research?”
She had a point. The problem was, I couldn’t completely remember my most recent research and the research I could remember with Keith hadn’t been so great in comparison. It could also be James had not at all been into just being research.
“Let me see,” she said, making grabby hands for my laptop.
“It’s just the first draft,” I said, deflecting her. I’d never been afraid to show Mandy one of my Candy stories no matter what phase it was in, but that was before they were about James.
“Is there sex in it?” she asked. There was already a water spot from her hair on the back of the couch. Our couch was covered with salt stains, each one a diving experience Amanda had been on. I kind of loved it.
“Obviously,” I said.
“Then I don’t care if you wrote it in hieroglyphics, give it.”
I passed her the laptop. It wasn’t worth fighting with her. It never was. Mandy was the kind of girl who always got what she wanted, one way or another.
She read silently, punctuating with the exclamations someone might make while they were having sex, yeah, oh yeah, naughty, and so on. I was used it to. It was how Mandy talked about most things. Things she liked, anyway.
“They ambled out of the shower and John wrapped Carly up in a fluffy white towel,” she read aloud. “She felt his hands linger on her shoulders longer than they had to. He spun her toward him, his firm body still naked and dripping wet. Water trickled down his muscles and pooled into the crevices of his skin like sweat. Carly’s felt her insides ache as she pictured herself lapping up every drop, sliding her tongue over every bit of his hot damp body, even though she knew it would never be enough. She wanted to fill herself with him until she couldn’t take anymore. He grasped her chin and kissed her hungrily until she had to gasp, until she only wanted to live on his oxygen, in his breath. Her abdomen was taut with desire as he threw the towel off, pressed her against the wall, and…”
“And what?” Mandy yelled, practically throwing the laptop back at me.
“I told you it wasn’t done,” I said, heavy with satisfaction, “‘and’ was when you interrupted me.”
“Damn, Candy, this is hot,” she said, her eyes hitting mine and widening. “Who’s this guy based on?”
“No one in particular,” I said, even though as she read aloud I saw James doing all those things to me. When I wrote, I felt James doing all those things to me. If only he knew that in addition to asking for just his body in real life, I was also screwing him six ways to Sunday on paper.
Amanda scrolled back to the beginning of the file. An opening scene where the characters meet and they realize they have been double booked in their mutual friends’ million-dollar ski lodge. The hero walks in to find the heroine drinking wine and reading in front of the fire, the flames making her dark auburn hair sing.
“Brown hair,” she listed, “brown eyes, body like a Photoshopped underwear model.” Mandy smirked. “No one in particular, huh?”
“No,” I said, my mouth shut tight.
“Not a certain student?” she asked.
“No way,” I protested, but I could feel myself turning pink. As pink as if I had been sitting in front of the fire myself when James walked in, his body filling the frame of the doorway, snowflakes sparkling on his jacket and in his hair, his gaze warming me like a mug of hot chocolate.
“I know this isn’t a story I told you,” Mandy said.
“I have an imagination of my own,” I said, pointing at the side of my head.
“Have you actually done all of this?” she asked.
“I write fiction,” I said.
She frowned. She didn’t like my answer, because it wasn’t an answer.
“Fine,” I said, practically mumbling. “Not yet.”
She smiled. “In that case, I know what should come after the ‘and.’” She paused for effect. “Yes, I said come.”
“Funny, you’re hilarious,” I said, not laughing.
“Do you want my help or not, Candice?” she asked, giving a hiss to the second c in my name.
I hadn’t asked for her help, but Mandy was the kind of person who didn’t care.
“Sure,” I said, indulging her.
“I want to make sure you’re prepared for this,” she said, touching my thigh.
“Let me guess,” I said, “more sex?”
“No,” she said seriously, “I think this scene needs a BJ.”
“Mandy,” I said, feeling my cheeks glow, my stomach lurch. I could write about sex, but something so intimate? I wasn’t sure.
Yes, I had wanted James to do the female version, but it would have been my first time having a man’s tongue on me. And when we were together in the pool, it hadn’t happened, so luckily I didn’t have to return the favor.
I had no idea how to return the favor.
Maybe we’d done that to each other the night of my blackout, but I feel like I would have remembered—or at least my body would have.
“What?” she asked, her voice filled with innocence quickly turning to anything but. “Have I steered you wrong yet?”
Answer: she hadn’t. Candy’s first book wouldn’t even have been written if it weren’t for her. It wouldn’t have made a dime, gotten one review, garnered me a single fan, and the truth was it had done exponential multiples of that.
I breathed out. She wasn’t telling me to give someone a blow job, she was telling me to write about it. That was different, right? “Okay, make your case.”
“Guys never expect them,” she said, practically bouncing up and down when she talked, “which means readers won’t. Plus he’s clean from the shower and he’s been the aggressor all this time, right?”
“Well, not all this time,” I said, realizing that even when I wrote about James I had him make all the first moves. The one time I could actually be the one shoving him into the shower, I still just let him do it. Was asking for sex the same thing as demanding it?
She sighed because she knew I was lying. “It might be fun for your character to turn the tables on this guy who isn’t based on anyone you know,” she teased.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Have you written a scene with one yet?” she asked.
I shook my head. I couldn’t even say it.
“Candy, you write erotic romance. Blow jobs are like breathing, or at least like eating.
Your characters need them to survive,” she finished, pausing between each word.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, hoping that would end the conversation. Unfortunately it was Mandy I was talking to.
“Have you ever given one?” she asked, glancing at me sideways. She wasn’t being mean. It was just Mandy thought she smelled bullshit. If I wasn’t writing about them there had to be a reason.
“Sure,” I said, but even with a simple word it felt like I was stumbling.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, because she could smell bullshit.
“I’m not sure how I could prove it to you.” I said, laughing, trying to make a joke out of the conversation. But to Mandy this was not a joke. She took sex seriously. It might have been part of the reason she found it so easy to talk about and perform.
I, on the contrary, had a gorgeous, willing specimen who I couldn’t get to climb in my window.
“If the only practice you’ve had is Keith, I’m not counting him,” she spat.
“Who else would it have been?” I asked, even though I’d never even done that with him. Keith had controlled our sex life, and I’d let him because at the time, I hadn’t known any better.
See, Candy was a pretty new invention. Candy didn’t really come out in my real life unless I’d had several mojitos.
Candy learned most of her tricks from Mandy.
And now, it seemed, from James.
All it ever was with Keith: him on top of me for five minutes, eight if he was drunk. Missionary, mun
dane missionary was the only move in his arsenal. I guess I was afraid to try anything else with him, and it’s not like he ever made me feel comfortable enough to.
I’d had orgasms before. Not with Keith, but I’d had them. I let him think he satisfied me, but really I would just satisfy myself. My dorm room door locked, music high, thinking about a guy I couldn’t picture except in fuzzy bits: strong, sensitive, senselessly sexy. The kind of guy who would throw me on the bed, rocket into me so hard I had to bite my lip not to scream out.
That was why Mandy didn’t count Keith for anything. The way he dumped me and how he’d treated me when we were together rendered anything between us null and void. Unfortunately, after having just been kissed by James, I kind of rendered it all null and void, too. Keith vs. James was like comparing a rock and Channing Tatum.
“Better question is who should it have been with?” Mandy asked, waking me from my trance.
Only now did I understand that sex meant very different things to different people. Mandy taught me that. Candy showed me that. James gave me that.
“Answer,” she replied. “Anyone else.”
“There isn’t anyone else.” My words were as empty as if they came from a robot.
“What about the guy this isn’t based on?” Mandy asked, knocking my knee with hers.
“Well, he doesn’t exist,” I explained.
“Okay, Candy,” Amanda said, clearly up to her ears in bullshit. “So do I need to show you with a banana eighties-movie style or what?”
“Please,” I said, covering my face, “please don’t.”
“Then write it in,” she said, tapping her foot.
“Jeez,” I said. “You act like it’s a matter of life and death.”
“To some relationships,” she said earnestly, “it is.”
Chapter Seventeen
In the morning, I headed to the Student Center hoping to find James. I mean, it was a Student Center. Wasn’t that where you’d expect a student to be?
I needed to apologize. I needed to do something, say something. I needed to take back what I’d asked for.
I needed to lock Candy back in her cage.
Even if it was unintentional, it was beyond wrong to treat him the way I had.
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