Sneaking Candy

by Lisa Burstein

  At least until I got my MFA. At least until I got accepted to a PhD program.

  “Candice, are you listening to me?” he asked.

  “I should get to work,” I said, trying to fight the redness building on my cheeks, the hollowness in my chest. “This piece is due Monday, as you know.”

  He watched me for a moment, perhaps wondering if the fact I was working on my story for workshop meant he had for now, at least, proven his point.

  “I’m willing to read it ahead of time, if you’d like.” He paused. “We could even have a drink and talk about it.”

  Did I want more private time with Professor Dylan? At the beginning of the semester it was all I wanted. Now, it only meant whatever time I was with him I had to spend pretending I was the kind of writer he thought I should be. I had to spend it not wanting to bash his ego-loaded head in.

  “Candice?” he asked. “I can tell you’re thinking about something and it’s not the question I just asked you.”

  “Sorry,” I said, searching my brain for an excuse. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was so pissed off or I really couldn’t think of one.

  “Would you like my help or not?” he asked.

  “That’s okay,” I said quickly, which was not an excuse, and I also knew would not be enough.

  When Professor Dylan gave an offer of assistance, people didn’t say no, especially not graduate-student-people. Especially not people who wanted the kind of career he had. Why was I saying no? Because I didn’t care what he thought anymore, even though I had to.

  “I kind of assumed you might want my opinion,” he said, like he could read my mind.

  “I do, but it’s not done yet,” I lied. Him telling me what he thought of Candy was all I needed to hear. What he thought of my work as Candice would never erase that.

  “Okay,” he said, watching me. “So you’re going into workshop naked?”

  “What?” I asked, probably a little too loudly. Hearing the word coming from Professor Dylan felt like he had done more than just looked up Candy Sloane’s book; it felt like he had read it.

  “Metaphorically, Candice,” he explained.

  “I know,” I said, even though I hadn’t.

  “It’s not a good idea to go in without any other reads before you throw your work to the wolves. And believe me, they will be wolves. They will be alligators and sharks and everything with fangs, especially for your first piece. It’s like a pack of wild dogs fighting for one bone.”

  I knew he was right. I’d seen it in my own workshops. Your peers tended to search for the issues in your manuscripts rather than the positives. It was their way of making themselves feel better about their own insecurities. To equate it to life, it was like you were standing on a table, literally naked, and people were saying, Your butt is big, you have cellulite on your thighs, and one of your boobs is bigger than the other, while they were no swimsuit models themselves.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’d love the help.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Great,” he said. “Send it to me in the next day and we can have a drink tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night?” I repeated. I guess I didn’t think it would really happen. It was one thing to say I wanted his help. It was another to set a time for it.

  “You have plans?”

  “No,” I said, “but it’s Saturday.”

  “Were you hoping for plans?” he asked.

  “No,” I said a little too loudly. The truth was I kind of had been, with James. There was a gnawing in my abdomen for him—a need. I wondered if it was loud enough to growl like hunger pains.

  “I want to give you enough time to incorporate my notes before you send it to your fellow classmates.” He nodded. “Workshop is Monday.”

  Professor Dylan didn’t require us to hand in our stories until the evening before workshop. Since our workshop started at 5:00 p.m., it gave our peers only twenty-four hours to read before critique. He’d said it was because he wanted our “fresh thoughts” about a piece, but really I think he knew no one would read before then anyway.

  “I know workshop is Monday,” I stalled.

  “Good,” he said, seeming not to notice. “Nine at the Regent.” He smiled.

  “Can’t wait,” I choked out. Choosing the Regent couldn’t have been a coincidence. Or was it just a place he liked? If he’d seen me there across the street at Eroticon, if he knew I was Candy, why wasn’t he admitting it?

  Maybe because he wanted me to.

  In my rush to get the hell out of the English department, I almost smacked into Julia.

  “Back again?” she asked her face as tight as the grip around her black leather briefcase strap. Of course it was black. I think her body had an allergic reaction to color.

  “Every other day,” I said. I just can’t get enough, I wanted to add.

  I watched her stare at Professor Dylan’s closed door. I’d seen that look before on other people; it was a look that asked, Why? As in, Why aren’t we still together?

  “He’s not busy. You could go in and talk to him,” I said, regretting immediately I had been nice. Julia didn’t do nice.

  “Well, I am busy,” she said, walking toward her office door. “Too busy to care about a guy who lets his students salivate all over him.”

  “You have it all wrong,” I said.

  “You’re not the first, honey,” she said, her teeth tight against her bottom lip, “and I doubt you’ll be the last.”

  “I know you won’t be the last,” I said.

  “I was the first,” she said. “Which means more than being someone he’s using until the next one comes along.”

  Why was I wasting my time fighting with her? I didn’t care what she thought, especially because it was totally untrue.

  “We’re having a drink at the Regent tomorrow if you want to stalk us there, too,” I said as I stormed out of the English department. I knew it sounded egotistical, but what was happening between Professor Dylan and I wasn’t about that anymore.

  The only thing we had between us now was a fight for literary dominance, and even if I couldn’t admit it to him yet, Candy didn’t like being on the bottom.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  After I’d wrung as much revision as I could into “Boxed In” and sent it off to Professor Dylan, I decided to do some of my own stalking of the Facebook variety. Not like I expected James to have posted I just had sex with the girl of my dreams on his wall or anything. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to find clues as to how he felt. He’d made it pretty clear, but more evidence was always good.

  Especially for a heart as panicked as mine had been.

  I also needed to post something to my Candy Facebook and Twitter. I tried to post something at least every day. Whether it was a shirtless sweaty photo of an underwear model or Hollywood heartthrob Mandy had sent me with the subject line: For Inspiration or Immediate Gratification, a snippet from what I was working on, or a question about love and romance. Since the turmoil and transcendence with James, I’d been neglecting her online persona. I hadn’t posted anything in days. And I liked staying connected to my readers. It reminded me I wasn’t crazy, that to some people Candy was real and they loved her.

  What Professor Dylan might never understand was that what Candy wrote about didn’t make her any less to her fans or to anyone else. She was a part of the literary community, just as much as he was. Plus, books like Candy’s made people happy, made them believe in love, and informed sexual awareness.

  If I’d started reading the books Mandy loved before college, I might have never even been with Keith.

  It wasn’t Candy’s fault or the fault of any other “little slut with a laptop” that their popularity made the old guard try to hold onto their place on the shelf for dear life.

  As authors, we all had to. It didn’t mean we needed to tear each other down to stay there.

  I logged in to my Candy Facebook and posted, Sorry for the absence, lovely readers
, but I’ve been steaming it up a little in real life so I can be even steamier for you on the page. <3 Candy. I copied and pasted it into my Twitter.

  It was the most truthful I’d been to anyone in weeks and it wasn’t lost on me that it was because my readers, who I loved and interacted with, had no idea who or what I was actually like in real life. I could tell them because it was a Candy truth.

  Too bad a Candice truth was that after Candy posted, she was going to cyber stalk the guy she was steaming it up with. Who she should have just called to ask him how he felt instead of trying to decipher it through the language, likes, and (no pun intended) pokes of Facebook.

  I clicked into my friends and then into his page. James Walker: Student at the University of Miami, 506 friends—more than half girls, which, considering he was like a modern version of James Dean minus the angst, wasn’t surprising. What was surprising? Even with all these little lady-faces stacked up like a Jenga game on his profile, he wanted to be with me.

  I scrolled down, relationship status: It’s complicated. Clearly the understatement of the year and different than it had been when he first friended me.

  What I didn’t know was when exactly he’d changed it. What I couldn’t know, unless I told him I’d been stalking him, was whether it was about me. I kept scrolling down. Looking for something, anything that would give me some shred of information.

  I almost fell out of my chair when a chat window with James’s picture popped up.

  You’re checking out my profile, aren’t you? it said. The little green circle next to his avatar was almost mocking me, a circular mouth singing na-na-na-na-na, I caught you.

  It felt like my heart had popped out of my chest and was flopping around on my keyboard. How can he know that? Can he know that?

  I might have just ignored the message, but he knew I was online. My little green circle was lit up, too—stupid Facebook chat default. It was also the first contact we’d had since the restaurant, and I did want to know what he was thinking even if I didn’t want to admit it.

  What? I wrote. As in, What are you talking about? My heart was still thumping on the keyboard with a beat repeating, Yeah right, yeah right, yeah right.

  You’re an even worse liar in print, he wrote.

  My face ignited, scorching down my neck and chest, especially when I realized I was still clicked into his profile. That our chat window was right on top of it, could have been making sweet, sweet love to it. I switched back to my profile quickly.

  It’s okay, he typed, I was looking at yours.

  He meant my Candice one, which I never used except to stalk other people.

  Really? I typed before I could stop myself. It was what I was thinking, but wow, I was so not following Mandy’s advice.

  Yup, I have been since you friended me. You don’t post a lot.

  I’m busy.

  I could make you a lot busier.

  He didn’t directly bring up what happened in the alley behind the restaurant, so I didn’t, either. Truthfully, I was kind of glad.

  I’m listening. I could have played hard to get, but considering how easy I’d played it already, it seemed silly.

  I’m surprised you haven’t changed your relationship status.

  I don’t have a status to update, I wrote, as a buzz filled my chest, a fever flitting like a bee, spreading warm and gooey nectar into my stomach and down to my thighs.

  I can tell you right now. You’re not single.

  What am I?

  Why don’t you come over to my apartment and find out?

  I watched my cursor blink once, twice, unsure what to write back. I wanted to, badly. I checked the clock. It was two in the morning. Amanda wasn’t here, so I couldn’t use her car.

  What was worse? Accepting a booty call via Facebook and walking miles to get there, or doing it out in an alley and then going back in to your date and eating your dinner like nothing happened?

  Did it even matter at this point?

  It’s late, I wrote.

  How about a little nightcap? he typed back, like we’d rehearsed this before.

  He wasn’t asking me to go to his apartment anymore. He was asking me to be with him here, on Facebook, staring at his little avatar while he stared at mine. He was asking me to do what I’d done alone in my dorm room in college at the same time he did.

  I heard Candy’s voice. It’s just cyber sex, Candice. I mean, you already jumped the guy, twice.

  I couldn’t hear Candice’s voice over the buzz in my head.

  Sounds hot, I wrote, suddenly feeling that way.

  It is hot tonight. I only have my boxers on. How about you?

  I could see him. His body: the perfect circle of his pectoral muscles and lines of his abs, the triangle of his waist. I felt my breath start to get heavy. The familiar tug and ache in my abdomen.

  Panties and a bra, I wrote without even thinking about it. I guess Candice could be Candy when she was typing the words, when a guy like James was on the other side of the screen.

  What color?

  I looked down. I was in black yoga pants and a ripped Foo Fighters T-shirt. I thought about lingerie I owned. Pink, pale rose pink, I wrote.

  Sexy, he responded. Describe them.

  Underwire lace push up bra, matching sheer lace thong, thin as tissue paper, I wrote, wanting to do everything he told me to do.

  Take them off.

  You take them off, I wrote because it was definitely sexier than okay, even if it was what I was thinking.

  Slowly my hands search the skin of your stomach, he responded. I slide one finger in the waistband of your panties and snap them before gripping them and guiding them down to your slender hips, rolling off one leg, then the other, my lips, my tongue, my breath, following the whole way.

  I couldn’t even write back. I just needed him to tell me what he was going to do to me next. I found the small blue vibrator I’d gotten at Eroticon and slid it under the fabric of my pants. All the way down to where I wanted James to touch me.

  You know that Chekov quote about putting a loaded gun in the first act? I guess this was what happened when you put a vibrator there.

  They’re off, he wrote, on the floor next to you. I also unhooked your bra.

  And you’re just sitting there?

  No, he wrote, I’m checking out every perfect part of your body, absorbing you, trying to keep myself from consuming you too quickly.

  I don’t think I can wait much longer, I wrote. Surprised how adept I was at typing with one hand. It was me touching me and him touching me. What happens now?

  Now? he typed. I’m coming over.

  While I waited for him, I searched my room for the pale pink bra and panties I’d described. I found them at the bottom of my underwear drawer. I hadn’t worn them since a Valentine’s Day years ago.

  It sounded like James was kicking down the door instead of knocking. I answered in my robe, my underwear and bra underneath. I guess I wasn’t ready to be full-on Candy yet.

  But when he kissed me and led me down the hall to my bedroom, I didn’t care who I was so long as I was with him. I couldn’t even talk and didn’t want to ruin the moment by asking him any of the questions in my head.

  Forget my head. Forget my heart.

  I had more enjoyable body parts to deal with. He walked me backward, our kiss sealing us together, our arms and legs tangled up in each other the whole way. We reached my bedroom. I pulled off my robe. He pulled off his shirt.

  “I thought I already took those off,” he said, pulling on the floss of my thong.

  “Not with your teeth,” I replied.

  We ripped off our clothes and fell onto my bed. I climbed on top of James, riding him like he was my motorcycle—his body rumbling against mine, his engine purring.

  “I want to make you moan again,” he whispered. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I…” I said softly. I thought about the boy I’d seen in my fantasies. The one I only saw in fuzzy bits, and wheth
er it could be James. For tonight, it would be. “I want it harder,” I said. “So hard I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming.”

  “Oh, you’re going to scream.” He moved his body, bucking against me, first slowly then faster.

  My mouth opened and my voice ascended at his request.

  “I’m glad you don’t have a class to teach tomorrow,” he whispered, “because you’re about to lose your voice.” He slammed against me, gliding his hips up and down, up and down. “I’m waiting,” he breathed, his eyes holding mine.

  I gave in to him. Into what he was asking for and what I wanted. I didn’t think. I moved. I acted. I shrieked.

  My body became his words, became something he could create. Became a masterpiece he didn’t even know he was writing, didn’t even realize would be his greatest work yet.

  I fell onto him gasping, shaking, aching. He pulled me down next to him and put his arms around me, my head in the crook between his neck and shoulder.

  He kissed me, lingering long enough that I almost forgot where we were.

  “Can I stay over? Or are we still at the sneaking out your window stage?” he asked, running his hand through my hair.

  “Amanda’s not here; you can stay over,” I said, gathering my breath, my body.

  “Would you let me stay over if Amanda were here?”

  “Probably,” I said snuggling into his chest.

  He kissed my forehead. “I trust you, Candice. It’s time for you to trust me.”

  Could I trust him? I mean really trust him? It was one thing to keep us a secret. It was another to keep mine, especially with Professor Dylan already suspecting.

  If he was going to be in my life, if I was going to let him in, he needed to know about everything. He needed to know about Candy.

  I wanted him to know about Candy.

  I was tired of hiding her. I wanted James and Candy and Candice. I wanted everything.

  “Okay,” I said, exhaling. “I’ve been keeping a secret from you.” I pulled away from his embrace, “From pretty much everyone.”

  “I’m already lying down,” he said. “Do I need to be in a coma to hear this news?”