by Kristen Mae
She glanced down at my hands, and I hid them behind my back. “I’m loose.”
“About as loose as if you were wearing a straitjacket.” She ordered two shots of Limoncello.
“I do feel like I’m wearing a straitjacket sometimes.” The bartender placed two shots on the bar, and I took mine between my thumb and first two fingers. They were shaking. “I used to be so…in control of myself.”
“You were white-knuckling, Hazel.”
“When I first met you, I thought you were the one with your heart on your sleeve. You always seemed to put everything out in the open.”
She tilted her head and smiled. “I’m outgoing, but I keep personal stuff…personal.” She held up her shot glass. “To Italy?”
How much didn’t I know about her? I had a sudden and overwhelming desire to know every last detail. “To Italy.”
We clinked the little glasses and tossed the liqueur back. It burned its way down my esophagus, hit my belly and spread a sweet heat through my abdomen. The tightness in my shoulders released, just a little.
Back in the main building, Claire and I slipped onto the dance floor together again, alone this time, since Raymond had returned to sit with Katrina and Frank at our table. I checked for Iris, but I couldn’t see her or her friends anywhere. I didn’t want to worry about her anyway; I threw my less-inhibited self into dancing with Claire, swinging my hips in time to the thumping music and pressing as close to her as I could while still playing the Not Touching game. It was an agonizing thing to play, especially now, at night, when we should have been in bed together.
I don’t know what kind of face I was making, but whatever it was made Claire lean in and shout “We can turn some music on later and do this the way we really want to, okay?”
I almost choked. I rested my hands on her forearms and brought my face to hers, letting her hair hide my face from view of the crowd, as if I was saying something in her ear. But instead of speaking, I bit her earlobe and pulled away before anyone could suspect what I was doing—though not before I felt her shiver in my arms. I went back to dancing as if nothing had happened, emboldened by my drunkenness. Claire danced for a while longer but kept biting her lip at me, and finally, she mouthed, “Let’s go.” I nodded eagerly, well beyond pretending to be cool.
On the way out, we passed Iris’s friends standing outside the club talking and smoking cigarettes. I couldn’t stop myself. “Where’s Iris?”
One of the girls shrugged and took a drag of her cigarette. “She left with some guy.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I kicked my shoes off and sat at the head of the bed in the dim room, leaning my bare upper back against the cool cement wall. From the moment I’d heard about Iris, a pulsing glob of anxiety had taken up residence in my chest—like the throbbing heat I used to feel for Claire before she’d let me have her, but sharper, with violent, ragged edges. Not good. I hugged my arms around my knees.
“She’s got to handle things in her own way, Hazel.” Claire sat on the corner of the bed and tucked a leg underneath herself. I’d shaken the whole taxi ride home, unable to talk to her at all. Yellow light from the hallway spilled into the darkened room, making her glow all down one side, and I had the wild compulsion to hunt down some paper and a pencil to draw her that way, as if doing so would stop the awful pulsing inside me. Her blue eyes looked intense, even in the dim light. “Hazel? Will you talk to me? I can see this thing with Iris is really bothering you.”
I shook my head stiffly. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“But you are thinking about it, aren’t you? You should talk about it. It might help.” She picked at the fluffy skirt of her dress. So sweet and clean and put together, that Claire. Always so sure. I wanted to point some of my jagged edges at her, scrape some of her smoothness away.
“Fine. I’ll talk. You want to know what I think about Iris? I think she’s acting like a slut. I think she’s going to throw herself at one guy after another, hoping it will…I don’t know, fill this hole inside of her or something.”
Claire narrowed her eyes. “Well, maybe it will. Who are we to judge?”
So she was going to pull that don’t-be-judgy-I’m-such-a-perfect-feminist bullshit. I closed my eyes, exasperated. “I’m not judging her, Claire. I’m just saying, because it’s true, that fucking guy after guy is not going to make it so her rape didn’t happen.”
“Maybe she’s not trying to make it so her rape didn’t happen. Maybe fucking random guys just makes her feel powerful, like she’s in control. A coping mechanism.”
My skin prickled at the way she’d gotten into my head again. She’d stopped playing with the hem of her dress and clasped her hands in her lap now, a prim, pious princess.
“Oh, what are you, a shrink now?” I said. It felt good to be mean. “That’s bullshit. It doesn’t work. All she’s doing is letting these guys use her.”
She gave me a long, stern look, let the time stretch out between us before she spoke again. “How many guys did you sleep with after what happened to you?”
My face hardened and the jagged pulsing dropped into my belly. For a second I thought I’d be sick, but I swallowed it down. “Claire—”
“Wasn’t that just a way for you to try to regain control?” Her hands were still clasped obnoxiously in her lap.
Now the pulsing was all over my body; I could even feel it in my face.
She unclasped her hands and crawled over to me on all fours until she had a hand on either side of my hips. Her face was only inches from mine. I thought she was going to try to kiss me, the way she’d come at me, but she didn’t—she froze and held my eyes with hers. I could taste the sweetness of her breath in the air between us. “Did it work, Hazel? Did fucking all those guys make you feel in control?”
I was sure she must feel the heat radiating off me; it hovered over us like a thick blanket, as if my rage was dense enough to produce a gravitational pull, create my own boiling atmosphere. I spoke through gritted teeth: “I didn’t fuck them.”
One of her eyebrows went up.
“I teased them. Made them hurt.”
She smiled, but not in a supportive way—mockingly. “And did that make you feel in control?”
My eyes stung with the effort of holding back furious tears. “Why are you doing this?”
“Have you ever been in control?”
She sat back on her heels, and for a split second I caught the scent of wet earth on the air, so powerful I found myself looking around for a pile of mud like a crazy person, and with that shock of scent came a flash of me falling face first into the mud next to my violin case and him using that stunned moment to flip and pin me. It made me want to pin Claire in the same way, to show her exactly what it felt like to have someone take your power from you.
“When’s the last time you really felt in control, Hazel?”
I saw the key disappearing into Trey’s eye socket, the ooze of blood surging over my neck and blouse when I pulled it out. That had felt like control. “You should really shut the fuck up, Claire.”
“No, really, let’s get to the bottom of this. How about now? Are you in control now?”
I lifted myself away from the wall and onto my knees. I was a head above her and shaking all over.
She held her position. “Nope, definitely not in control. You killed him, Hazel, the guy is fucking dead, and yet he’s still this big heavy weight you drag around with you, like some maggot-infested corpse you just can’t seem to find a place to bury. I mean, for god’s sake, the guy is still raping you in your dreams.”
My hand flew out between us and slapped her cheek before I even knew what I was doing. She gasped, swayed, even cringed a little, but she kept her hands off her face and her eyes on me.
“There you go, Hazel, that’s it.” Her smile remained, strange and mocking in the dim golden light. “And what about this bullshit with me, anyway? Isn’t this just another fucked up attempt to feel in control of yourself? You’re not
a lesbian. The only reason you like me is that you can’t handle fucking your husband because he has a dick, and dicks are scary.”
“You bitch.” I slapped her again, but this time I knew it was coming. She landed on her elbow on the bed with a pained grunt, and pushed herself back up to face me. My heartbeat slammed in my temples. The hot pulsing was all over, even in my neck and on my face, and the shadowy room had taken on a red tint.
“You don’t really even have me, Hazel. And you never will. You’re not in control, not one little bit.” She jutted her chin out now, waiting for another slap, but instead, I shoved her by the shoulders and sent her tumbling off the bed and onto the floor. She scrambled back up on the bed and pushed me back, hard, but I grabbed her arms and pulled her with me and we crashed together into the cement wall behind me.
Our arms were tangled now, each of us trying to gain control of the other. I let myself fall back into the wall again and then propelled myself off it, dove at her and shoved her down on the bed, straddling her pelvis as I pinned her arms over her head. My skirt had hiked up around my hips but I was too overcome with anger to care. Claire fought and bucked underneath me, made me work to keep her down.
“You don’t have control,” she spat. “Iris doesn’t have control. No one does. Control is an illusion. Terrible things happen with no reason at all. Terrible, ugly, fucked-up things like rape and death and loss, and there is no power, no control. There’s just the big, mean universe scraping out your insides and tossing them in the trash, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.”
Her voice broke on the word “goddamn,” and the rest of the sentence stumbled out funny. She was as tense as a penned bull beneath me.
My rage still pulsed at my temples, but a little of the red went out of the room. “Claire…”
She scrunched her eyes shut, but not before one small tear escaped. And I knew then, the way I knew it for myself, that whatever had made that tear slip out was not a problem that could be solved by talking.
“Claire.” I said her name gently, but squeezed her wrists hard in warning. “I’m going to hurt you now.”
“Okay.”
“Sure?”
“Please.”
“I killed someone.”
“Yes.”
I still had her pinned. I let go of her wrists and dragged my fingers up her forearms toward her shoulders, making her shiver and exhale with crazy spasms. My hands paused at her neck, and then I dug them deep into her curls. She gasped like I’d already hurt her, but I took a deep breath and yanked her hair hard, pulling her head back so the white arch of her throat stretched out, unprotected and vulnerable. That had to hurt. Her face contorted like she was in pain, but the sigh that escaped her told me something different. She liked this. And I, realizing that I could unleash my fury on her and that she would enjoy it, felt like I might levitate off the bed.
I kept her hair tight in my fists, found her earlobe with my mouth and bit down, first lightly, then with increasing pressure until she kicked her legs against the pain.
I moved my mouth and did the same to her neck, sucking hard enough that I was sure I would leave marks on her. Her body spasmed and contorted.
I pulled my hands out of her hair and yanked the top of her dress down around her waist, baring her breasts, and I peeled off my own clothes too—I wanted to feel every bit of what I did to her. I’d never felt so powerful in my life, being the cause of those soft, echoed gasps in that noiseless room. She was mine.
She whimpered as I moved back and forth on her, rubbing my crotch against the thigh I straddled, not caring that I was soiling her pretty dress with my wetness. I hoped she could never wear it again after this. I hovered over her, keeping my mouth very near hers, not kissing, but sharing the same sweet air. Remnants of the Limoncello shot we’d done together still lingered on her breath.
I slid my body down hers, bit my way down her neck and chest until my mouth fell on her breasts. Little moans escaped her now, and tremors wracked her body. I knew she was waiting to see what I’d do next. “Turn over,” I said.
She flipped and I found her zipper, pulled it down, and slid her dress off. “Holy shit, Claire, you’re not wearing underwear.” My skin lit up at the sight of her creamy skin, at the knowledge that she’d been exposed like that all night and I hadn’t known.
She was lying on her stomach facing away from me. “I was hoping you’d finger fuck me in the taxi.”
Jesus. The matter-of-fact way she said it, with no sex in her voice at all, made it the hottest thing I’d ever heard in my life. I grabbed a handful of her hair with one hand, yanking upward so she was forced to lift onto all fours. I slid my other hand between her legs from behind and toyed with her until she started whimpering and heating up, but I pulled out of her when I could tell she was about to come. I bent and scraped my teeth over the roundness of her ass, then bit down. This time she yelped like I’d really hurt her.
I flipped her onto her back and lay over her again, straddling her leg and kissing her, but this wasn’t like ordinary kissing—it was like drinking, like thirsty lapping. Her hands moved down my back until she clasped my naked hips, digging her nails into me to pull me closer. She spread her legs wide, silently begging for my fingers again.
“Wait,” I said. She was uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough. I broke away from her and watched her pant for me, then pushed my hands back up her arms, pressing harder, rougher, until her skin caught and twisted under my palm like an Indian burn. I clawed down her torso the same way, leaving bright pink trails all over her breasts and abdomen. Her legs kicked and writhed beneath me, her breathing now gasping and erratic. “Please.”
I took one of her nipples in my mouth, sucked hard, and then held it between my teeth. She cried out and I let go, suddenly scared I’d gone too far.
“No, don’t stop…please.”
I took her nipple between my teeth again, more confident this time, and placed one of my hands between her legs, palming her pubic bone until she almost cried, bucking against me to get me to finger her. When I finally released her nipple from between my teeth, she broke out in goosebumps all over her chest and arms.
“You like that?” I asked her, and a surprise wave of heat radiated through me at the erotic sound of my own voice.
“Holy fuck, yes, now fuck me, please, for the love of god.” This time when she reached for me I let her pull my face to hers, let her kiss me, and then her hands were in my hair, down my back, palming my ass and drawing my hips toward her.
I pressed my thigh between her legs as I had before, but this time naked flesh on flesh, and her wetness smeared all over my leg. She dug her fingers into my hips, breathless and panting, trying to pull me closer. “All the way. Fuck me.” She said it like she was angry. Finally, I understood that she wanted me to position myself so that my clitoris was pressed against hers. I settled against her, rode her, watched her eyes roll back into her head as all the cells in my body began to sizzle.
“Ah, god, Hazel, you’re killing me.” Her hands sprang away from my hips and fisted the bedsheets, twisting and ripping at them until they tore from the corners of the mattress. I let go of whatever last strands of inhibition remained and threw myself into fucking her, gripping onto the leg she’d wrapped around me and making the kind of moaning sounds people make when they’re in pain. But this was pain; we had inflicted pain on one another, both of us together, and we’d shared it and embraced it and sent it scattering away from ourselves. Now the only pain remaining was that we had gotten as close as two humans could, but we still weren’t—and never would be—close enough.
The now-familiar buzz began to build, and I breathed, “I’m coming,” because I knew she’d like to hear me say it, knew it would send her over the edge with me. And along with the delicious, all-consuming wave that swept over me came an undercurrent of dread, low and strong and devastating. Because I knew then that I would give anything to never let go of Claire.
Claire and I planned to spend Sunday morning at Pisa and the afternoon at the beach at Viareggio. She left my apartment while I showered so she could go to hers and grab a bathing suit, towel, and change of clothes, and by the time I caught up with her at the train station, she was already there waiting with our tickets in her hands. When I saw her sitting there on the bench by herself, canvas beach bag on the cement floor leaning against her delicate ankles, tiny, unassuming Claire who somehow managed to fill the universe, I had another fleeting moment of vertigo. It was that contented smile on her face, knowing it was for me, knowing I had put it there simply by showing up, that threw me off balance. But though I was dizzy, I made myself keep moving toward her.
I stopped in front of her and bent to kiss her cheek. This was a normal and expected greeting in Italy, something no one in an Italian train station would think twice about, but I was kissing the spot where I’d hit her—where I now saw the faintest hint of a bruise. When I pulled away from her, her eyes were closed and her breath was heavy. Last night had changed us. We’d each done something for the other that no one else could do, and in doing so, we’d formed a deep, significant bond. A bond that would soon be severed.
On the train, we gazed out the windows and snapped photos of the countryside, with its green hills and rustic stone houses that looked like they’d been painted there purely for our enjoyment. I thought of Oren, tried to wonder what he would think of the landscape, but he seemed too far away to imagine properly. I’d emailed him that morning to tell him that everything was fine and that I’d see him in just over a week. It scared me how much I didn’t miss him.
“Stop thinking,” Claire said. “Let’s be in the moment for now.”
“Stop reading my mind,” I said, keeping my eyes on the scenery. I held my camera up to the window and snapped a few shots without really paying attention to what I was taking pictures of.