by Piper Lennox
“What’s wrong with Paige?” I asked. “And what do you mean about everyone running their mouths?”
His neck lolled back and forth on the corner of the mattress, a lazy head-shake with an even lazier hand-wave accompanying it. “They’re fake, that’s all.”
“Which ones?”
“Almost everyone I know.”
“Even Paige?” I didn’t really want this answer. Becoming friends with her was almost as exciting as sitting in a bedroom, alone, with the Theo Durham.
He exhaled hard through his nose. “Mixed feelings there. But everyone else...yeah, they can go fuck themselves.”
Time staggered onward, blurred in the slosh of the liquor we kept passing. I liked that I could smell his skin on the mouth of the bottle, every time I lifted it to my lips.
It felt like hours that we sat there and talked, laughing through random anecdotes or humming to familiar songs that poured up through the floor. Sometimes the conversation dipped into serious matters—his father being gone so much, my father being gone permanently; the pressures of socializing in a world where, for one reason or another, you didn’t quite fit.
“I like this.” Theo hefted himself onto the bed and held out his hand. I let him pull me up. “I never do this.”
“What?” I flopped back like tumbling into fresh snow. “Talk to someone?”
“Talk to someone longer than a half hour without feeling so—so done. You know?”
I didn’t know. My mom, her sister, and their mother brought me up in a wonderfully noisy world of half-shouts, wild laughter, and constant interruptions. Silence felt wrong. For us, there was no clearer sign of loneliness.
“Why don’t you feel that way with me, then?” My eyes slid shut. I almost slept—until I felt him sink down beside me, our arms touching.
“You’re so...interesting. I’ve seen you around every summer, and it always seemed like there was way more to you than what I saw.”
His fingers teased their way into mine. Fireworks of joy detonated in my head.
“After meeting you,” he said, “I know I was right.”
“You’ve seen me?” And here I’d assumed I was invisible to him.
He nodded. “And you’re real. Your smile is real.”
“And crooked,” I snorted bitterly.
“So?”
Warmth bloomed in my chest. With my eyes still closed, I smiled. Teeth and all.
“And you’re kind...considerate. Literally anyone else at this party, if they’d found me on the bathroom floor like you did? They would’ve just left me there, or taken a video to give me shit for it later. You didn’t.”
“I like helping people,” I shrugged. His praise embarrassed me, but in a fantastic way. The kind that makes your heart buzz, knowing someone finally sees those unseeable pieces.
My insecurities still chattered in the background, though, and I couldn’t resist my next question.
“What about the rest?”
I felt the mattress shift as he pushed up on his elbow; when I opened my eyes, he was staring down into my face. His free hand pushed my hair off my forehead, thumb resting against my temple.
He bent down, placing a soft, testing kiss on my collarbone. “What ‘rest?’”
I knew he felt the heat enveloping me, clawing its way across my skin and sinking into his lips. “I don’t look like the other girls down there. I’m not exactly pretty.”
“I think you are.”
He brought his mouth to mine. There was no contact, just a floating, barely-there connection as he studied me up-close.
“Something about you is just so good and honest,” he whispered. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”
When he finally kissed me, the entire world tilted sideways.
Everything was saturated in hormones and alcohol. Our limbs moved with the music and much louder soundtrack of our own fevered breathing, clothes being shoved aside and removed, every wet or hard place being explored at breakneck pace. It felt like staring at a multi-course feast and not knowing where on earth to start. You wanted it all.
He filled me with his fingers and pulsed them against my G-spot so hard I nearly cried at how good it felt. My thighs shook, twitching when his other hand left my hard nipples to find my clitoris.
Neon static zig-zagged through my head. Soon all I could do was tell him, “I’m gonna come,” over and over until it was happening.
My orgasm prowled through me like lightning when it shreds the sky, powerful and fierce. I whimpered against his mouth, my bottom lip trapped in his teeth, and shuddered down from the high.
Theo bit his smile as he pulled back and gently slipped his fingers out of me.
I kissed him hard, grabbing his collar in both fists. Maybe it was because no one else had ever made me come before—no one else had ever touched me—but I felt so close to him in that heady afterglow. I wanted nothing more than to make him feel it, too.
We moved to the foot of the bed. He sat. I kneeled in front.
My swimming brain directed me through the motions I didn’t really know how to do. Like our banter, I wondered if my bravery was the alcohol at work or Theo himself.
It had to be him.
He wasn’t like those kids downstairs—nothing at all like Vivi, Cate, or the boys who frequently peeled tires nearby when they saw me around town. He didn’t make me feel judged. He was worlds apart from the kids who took one look at my crossed eye, crooked teeth, bargain clothes or extra weight and dubbed me garbage.
He was beyond them all. Above. Alone in a quiet, soft room as their party tumbled on.
“Oh, fuck…Aria,” he moaned, winding my hair into his grip and guiding my pace. His erection hit the back of my throat. “I’m so close.”
His abdominals tightened. I braced myself; I’d heard ejaculate tasted awful from several girls back home. Even the ones who insisted otherwise said it was better to go deep, and avoid letting it linger on your tongue.
Either way, I wanted to swallow Theo’s. It felt like the more intimate option, and that’s what I wanted: for this night to mean something beyond a party hookup or drunken fling. I was willing to do whatever it took to show him how much I liked him. How great we’d be together.
“Coming,” Theo stammered, tilting his head to the ceiling.
Suddenly, a loud bang sounded at the door. I drew back at the exact second Theo orgasmed.
Two things registered with me, first.
One was how much my eye stung, the heat of his ejaculate rapidly cooling until it felt like a line of slush dripping down to my mouth.
And two...the crowd of bodies tumbling through the doorway, screaming and laughing and shrieking insults as little glowing orbs flew between them.
Flashlights, I thought.
Then I realized, no: cell phones.
7
Theo bolted to his feet. I lost my balance, splayed back on the perfect white rug.
Cameras were shoved close as I hid my face. Jagged laughter pummeled me from all sides when I grabbed my skirt and ducked into the bathroom.
I slammed and locked the door behind me, pulse pounding. Worse than pounding. It really felt like my heart would explode.
“Come on out, Tons of Fun!” someone shouted. “You owe these nice folks an encore. Let’s shoot it again, different angle.”
More slurred insults drilled through the door. Palms and fists rattled it until my spine felt rearranged.
Slowly, I lifted my eyes to the mirror.
Theo’s ejaculate was still on my face. My hair was wet from it. The back was tangled from where he’d grabbed me.
I looked down, the harsh lights illuminating every curve in the wrong place, every dimple of cellulite...my rugburned knees and awkward stance, like a pigeon-toed toddler waiting on a punishment.
I looked pathetic, and cheap, and so wrong in that lavish bathroom. A beaten-up thrift store doll, on a shelf of porcelain collectibles.
A big, ugly coyote skull amongst dainty li
ttle birds.
Did Theo put them up to this?
My hands trembled. The brushed nickel handles of the cabinets singed my palms as I threw them open, hunting for a towel, a cover-up...anything to help me regain some dignity.
This can’t be real.
Vomit rose into my throat. The shock was fading. This was the most real moment of my life, and something irreversibly awful had just occurred. That much, I knew. Even if I couldn’t yet think straight to figure out what.
“Your boyfriend’s waiting, Cinderella,” someone cackled. Vivi. Her tone made it obvious she was holding a camera, too.
How many of them were out there? Did the whole party traipse upstairs to crash my moment with Theo?
Was my entire invitation part of some horrible joke?
At that moment, I heard someone shouting beyond the door, dispersing the crowd. “You stupid fucks, get out of here! All of you should be ashamed. Jesus Christ. And really, Joanna? You too? I’d think you of all people would know better than this shit, considering what happened with you and that surfer last summer. Come on, get out.”
Jeers and grumbles slithered under the door, growing fainter as a slow, shuffling stampede commenced.
Eventually, I heard a door shut. The bedroom grew silent.
“Aria?” Paige pressed her mouth close to the wood. “They’re gone, sweetie. I’ve got your stuff.”
Swallowing the tears and bile in my throat, I opened the door. Paige rushed inside and shut it behind her, then gathered me in the tightest hug I’d ever gotten.
“I’m so sorry.” Her blubbering echoed through the bathroom worse than my own. “I should’ve warned you.”
I blinked. “Warned me?” Did she know they’d do this?
“About Theo.” Paige drew back and swiped the tears from her eyes. Even her smudged eyeliner looked beautiful, like a superhero mask inked into her skin. “He gets like this when he’s drinking.”
Through the fading panic and increasing heartache, I got dressed. At the sink, I splashed hot water into my eyes until the skin around them turned red. But at least I was clean.
“Gets like this?” I repeated, when I brought my head up and stared at my reflection, then past it to hers.
“You know...horny. Mean. You’re not the first he’s....”
“He wasn’t mean.” Answers were clicking together in my head that I didn’t want assembled, truths I wasn’t ready to believe—but this was one fact that I wanted on-record. Theo was unbelievably kind to me.
Paige, as though reading my thoughts, gave me a pitying smile and slid down against the door, locking it as she sank. “All part of his routine,” she whispered.
I caught my lip in my teeth and couldn’t decide if I loved or despised that it still tasted like him.
“He does this kind of thing with girls at parties.” She looked like she might cry again, but steeled herself with a breath and beckoned me closer so she could fix my hair. While I knelt, letting her work, she said, “It’s a game for him.”
“A game?”
“Hooking up with girls. I should’ve warned you. I just didn’t think....”
I hesitated. “Didn’t think...he’d want me?”
There it flashed again: a smile so warped with pity it drove a tiny knife through my heart.
“Didn’t think you’d want him,” she finished. Her fingertips were cool on my forehead, brushing my long bangs back where they belonged. “If I knew you were into him, I never would’ve brought you within, like...twenty yards.”
“I thought you guys were friends.” Weren’t they?
Then again, Theo did say that thing about Paige running her mouth. That they all did.
“Real talk?” she asked, sighing. “I’m only friends with Theo because the rest of our group is. And even they don’t really like him.”
Her hands slid slowly from my hair and down to her legs with a slap, then motioned to the bathroom around us.
“This is what they like. His nice house, his parties...his money. And the fact his dad gives him free rein with pretty much all of it.”
“It’s not my party. It’s theirs.”
“But everyone else...yeah, they can go fuck themselves.”
His words spun through my head, getting chopped to pieces like a food processor.
He said I was interesting.
He said he’d never met anyone like me.
His kiss, his touch...that smile. All given to me within—what? Only a couple hours of meeting?
Of course it was all pretend.
Nothing but a game.
I spun and vomited into the toilet, the alcohol barely burning as it left my body. All the venom was in my bloodstream.
Paige rubbed my back and held my hair off my neck. She whispered that I’d be all right.
“And, hey—my uncle is a lawyer. We can figure something out.”
“Lawyer?” I coughed. Finally, my stomach was empty.
While I rinsed my mouth, she said, “Yeah, you know: for the videos.”
Oh. Right. All the camera flashes from before danced across my eyes again.
“The only one we’ll have trouble taking down,” she went on, inhaling sharply as she hoisted herself onto the countertop beside me, “is Theo’s. He’s got this, like, system. Some way of tagging it so it’s virtually impossible to find every link. But if anyone can do it, my uncle can.”
I drank handfuls of water until my heart stopped pounding, but her words made it start up again. I straightened and stared at her. “What?”
Now, instead of pity, her face flooded with devastation.
“Come here,” she said, and took my hand.
Paige pulled me back into the bedroom. I didn’t want to be here. I wished I could teleport back to my rented bedroom, or Callum’s car, or a nondescript ditch.
Still, I let her drag me over to the shelves. The skulls stared through me.
She lifted each one, cursing when she came up empty. “Fuck! That asshole took it with him. Come on.”
“Took what?” I asked, but we were already in the hallway, music choking me as she shoved past bodies, cursed people out on my behalf, and even slapped one particularly crude guy right in his mouth. Suddenly, we were downstairs.
Theo stood on the kitchen counter. “Get. The fuck. Out.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and stumbled, his foot going into the sink. He barely seemed to notice. “Everyone. Now.”
“Theo!” Paige yanked me through the bodies, although now her being my human steamroller wasn’t necessary: people parted for us like the Red Sea. It was jarring to see the actual floor.
“Where is it?” she shouted up at him. “I know you had one. Show us.”
He gaped at her, ready to scream something back, when a group of guys snuck up on the other side of the island and punched the back of his knee, laughing. His leg buckled and he fell backward, into their waiting hands.
“Get the fuck off me!”
A fight ensued, Theo’s slurred threats and staggered punches blurring as more boys joined in, girls screamed, and the music kept playing.
“Fuck it,” she breathed, taking my hand again. We plowed our way out to the back deck, then down a set of concrete steps on a hill. The smell of fresh grass and the bay breeze felt like peroxide to my soul: cleansing, but so painful.
“What’s going on?” At last, I had the ability to pull my hand from hers. I was grateful for her help and kindness, but I needed answers. Now. “What did he do?”
In the moonlight, Paige’s eyes shone again. She folded her arms and looked around. We were alone.
“He filmed you, Aria.” Her tears fell. “He hid a webcam in the skulls on his shelf. I know he did.”
My tongue felt thick and wrong, like an allergic reaction. “How?”
Briefly, she glanced away. Her face reddened.
“Because he’s done it before, to other girls.” I heard her swallow. “He’s done it to me.”
My head was swimming again. I hated this
. I wanted to be sober, and showered, at home or eating pie with Callum and his brother at our favorite diner. Not outside some sprawling Hamptons mansion, hearing this.
“Maybe I’m wrong.” Paige hesitated, then reached out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I hope I am, for your sake. But...I don’t think I am. I know Theo.”
“Why did everyone come upstairs, then?”
“Why does anyone do shit like this?” she shrugged angrily. “They think it’s funny. I’m willing to bet some random guy stumbled in, saw you two, told his buddies…then it went from there. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Theo told a bunch of them himself, before the party started. It’s all a big joke to him.”
My stomach lurched, but I took solace in knowing I couldn’t possibly throw up anything else. I coughed until the taste of bile was gone, then sat underneath a window. She joined me.
For a long time, we were silent. The party pulsed behind us. The soft roar of the bay was drowned in the throbbing chaos of teenagers with too much money and time.
“What’s he going to do?”
“Post the video on every porn site he can,” she muttered, pulling her knees to her chest, “and spam the internet with links. That’s what happened with all the others, anyway.” She looked at me, tear tracks glistening in the white moonlight. “Like I said, my uncle can help you get most of them taken down, if you want. But it’ll always be out there somehow. Just warning you.”
Numbly, I thanked her and took the tattered business card she produced from her phone case’s wallet.
“You should go home. Get some rest, think things over—”
As she spoke, I was nodding, getting to my feet and trying to text Callum with trembling hands. Don’t think about tomorrow. Just focus on tonight.
Get home. Get sleep.
“No.” I shook my head. My phone screen blurred; I blinked the tears away and slid it back into my bra. “I need to talk to him.”
“Who? Theo?” She jumped up and followed me around to the front of the house.
“If I can just talk to him—”
“I’m telling you, Aria, he won’t listen!” She grabbed my arm and jerked me off the porch. “You can’t reason with a guy like that. You don’t think I tried, when he did it to me?”