How flattering.
Niko taps her fingers on the kitchen countertop and awaits the dulling of the coffee machine’s orange light with her coffee cup impatiently clinched in her fingers. It’s a clear plastic cylinder that displays a drawing that Niko drew as a first grader. A little girl in a triangle skirt whose arm elastically bends up to a man dressed in a black suit with oversized glasses. Around them, she’s written, I love my Daddy. Appearance wise, Niko’s puffy and her cheeks have that acne her makeup covers so well. She wears a pair of short-shorts and a slinky camisole, no bra.
The orange light dims. The coffee pours.
Niko tries to say good morning. It comes out as, “Ugh.”
“Good morning, too.” From the refrigerator, she removes an unopened gallon of milk, then some cereal from the pantry. Niko’s family must pay someone to keep this place stocked even though they’re never here. Rich people are strange. She sits at the island counter and decides that, even though doing so blew up in her face last night, she’s gonna ignore her shaky eyesight. Relax. “But, I’m a bit ‘ugh’ myself.”
Niko drinks her first sip with aspirin, supplies Sykosa her own cup, then replaces the mug for the yellow and red cereal box, stuffing handfuls down her throat. “It’s not mine.”
“What’s not yours?”
“The coke on the table, it’s not mine.”
“I wasn’t thinking it was.”
“I didn’t do any, either.”
“I didn’t say that you did.”
“I don’t know where Timmy got it. I told him not to bring that stuff around me.”
And yet, there it is. “You know where he got it.”
Scott.
Niko’s serious. “Hey, you don’t know that.” Then Niko chews another handful before scratching her thigh. “What happened with Clyde? You seemed totally into him, then you ditched him. He was calling you a bitch and was totally pissed off.”
She has no concern in her voice. “Looks like he got over it.”
Niko covers her smile. “Oh, my God, she was all over him.”
She, being SS1, also has a boyfriend.
“Gross.”
“I don’t know, sometimes it just happens, I suppose.”
“I suppose.” She does suppose. As that’s what happened to her. Funny, she worried if she took Tom here he’d turn into another guy, like the guys the Sluts’ date. But he didn’t. He tried to make this weekend special. He asked me to Prom, told me he loved me, told Mackenzie we’re dating… And she went psycho on him when he tried to sleep with her. Then, like a total bimbo, scrambled to make up for it by sucking his dick. Like SS1 probably did to Clyde. Wow, that did wonders for her self-esteem. I’m not a slut! She replaces the monologue with chews and swallows. “I grabbed this before I came down.”
It’s Niko’s necklace.
“Admit it, you liked wearing it, right?”
Honestly, given everything, she forgot she had it on.
“It was cool.”
Clyde farts something large and smelly.
Niko laughs. “He’s been doing that all morning.”
“Disgusting.” Timmy makes a noise that unidentifiable as a bodily function. “Shit, what was that?”
“I don’t know, but it’s what woke me up.”
When she took out the necklace, she took out her smokes. One is lit between her lips. She is sick over the first hit. Once that’s gone, she feels a sympathy for Niko. To be with that drool hound and his loser job as night manager at the 7/11. She’d never wish that fate on any girl, well, except Mackenzie. “I’m not trying to sound guyish, but Clyde has all this baggage, and I don’t have the energy for it.” She ashes into an empty beer can, then brushes her wet hair behind her hair before she tightens the bathrobe over her chest. And thinks: If Niko knew, I bet she’d feel sympathy for me. (She’s on a run of really bad thoughts). “Tom is… He only wants to be himself, and even though he isn’t perfect, at least I know him.”
Niko smiles. “Well, of course, you know him.”
She’s confused. “I don’t understand.”
Niko does. “You guys did it, didn’t you?”
She’s fast. “No.”
“Yes, you did.”
The cigarette makes her sound like she’s wearing a retainer. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you did.”
Fuck, am I marked or something? “I didn’t.”
“Swear to me you didn’t.”
“I swear.”
Niko smiles bigger. “You’re a fucking liar.”
That read worse than it sounded. There’s something about Tom that makes her lie, even to Niko, who should always know the truth. “Okay, yes.”
Niko grabs her arm like she was dying. “Did you enjoy it?”
“It was alright.”
“Enjoy it, alright? Don’t be one of those girls who can’t.”
She stutters. What a strange thing to say. “O-okay.”
Then, Niko remembers that Sykosa’s kinda a baby. “It hurt, didn’t it? You shouldn’t worry because—”
She interrupts. “Well, it was kind of an accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“We started and I wanted to stop, but we didn’t in time.”
“You wanted to stop?”
She doesn’t want to explain it. She tries to sound like its no-biggie while she looks at the cereal box as if it said something important. “It was weird, okay? We did other stuff, but I think we went too far beforehand. I think it happened.”
Niko’s unsure how to behave. “Are you okay with that?”
No.
And not necessarily for the reasons she might’ve expected. All the terror in her considered, there’s no legitimate regret to having lost her virginity to him. If anything, she thinks back to earlier this week, when she was deciding on the turquoise, and how excited she was. Part of me wanted to do it. However, that part wanted none of the blackness involved. Maybe I should have sex. Upstairs. Now. She said she was “horny” earlier and she is, but it’s not a fidgety horny. It’s a… “Pull.” She feels the pull. It wants her to sleep with him. She ignores it by eating cereal, then asking for some of that aspirin that Niko took.
“Can I have some of that aspirin?”
Niko gets a naughty look. “I have something a bit better.”
Who knows where Niko got it, since Niko is barely dressed, but her hand holds a 3/4th consumed bottle of whiskey. Its cap already spins on the counter after being spun off the bottle. Niko spices up her own coffee, then sucks down on the only cure for a hangover she knows—getting more hammered. Once Niko’s finished with her a gulp, she liquors up Sykosa’s drink.
She’s obliged. “Thanks.”
The coffee, which was a bit strong, now tastes sweet, maybe syrupy, like it were mixed with honey. Not surprisingly, as well against anything any adult ever told her, the second it washes her tongue, she thinks clearer and the fog of the morning lifts. She wants to gossip. “Did you do it last night?” While this question is gossip, it’s also rhetorical. Like Timmy, or Niko for that matter, would skip on the statutory rape. She’ll skip on hearing about it. “What I meant was…”
Niko’s already answered. “Nope.”
“You didn’t?”
Niko shrugs. “He was too drunk to get hard.”
She smirks, then buries it. “Really?”
“His loss.”
“Or your gain.”
Niko looks playfully hurt. “You’re such a bitch.”
She smiles. I sorta am. “I’m sorry.”
Niko also apologizes. “I’m sorry, but I gotta know—are you gonna do it again with Tom?”
Her thoughts are quick and decisive.
Yes.
In real life, she shrugs. “If he wants to.”
“Well, he’s gonna want to, so—”
She interrupts. “I want to.”
The answer confused her. It’s not so bad since this time with Niko has pushed the blacknes
s to the backburner. She still feels it. It doesn’t normally work like this. The blackness wins, then leaves. Its victory last night has somehow carried over to this morning, as has her decision of sex. And it is a decision. If she goes back to Seattle without the deed done, it puts many things in a precarious position.
That’s not what I meant.
She means that…
“Niko, did you ever tell Hazu about Scott?”
Niko gets a serious look. They don’t talk about this.
“No, why would I?”
She gets apologetic. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve—”
Niko interrupts. “Yeah, you shoudln’t’ve.”
She drinks. “I’m sorry.”
Niko focuses. She’s sucking at helping out. Typically, these issuses are her own. Niko feels responsible. It was her idea to come out here and to invite Tom. I practically engineered the entire thing! Now Sykosa’s been… She didn’t want Sykosa to lose her virginity this way. Aside from her own responsibility, Niko feels resigned. As Niko sees it, when it involves Sykosa and Tom, even when it’s foolproof, it’s always a disaster. It started last year and it continues to this day.
Now Niko has to go along and fake it.
Niko coaches herself: So stay cool, help her sweat it out.
This is Sykosa.
Niko knows, somewhere, the chick is losing it. “Eh, I was out of line. And I’ve never told Hazu. Why do you ask?”
“I was thinking… Tom doesn’t know. He thinks we didn’t do it. If I went upstairs and I—”
Niko interrupts. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know, but—”
Niko interrupts again. “Do you feel the same about him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you have quasi-semi-warm-feelings for him.”
That’s right. Niko doesn’t know she’s in love with him, and he’s in love with her, and… She needs to recommit to this friendship. If she listened to Niko and trusted Niko, instead of always thinking about Scott and last year, then… That was an important question. The answer is yes. She does still love him. And she’s still grateful for what he did for her last year. And she still wants to go to Prom with him.
I did let him see the blackness.
Maybe that was also her way of saying, “I love you.”
“Niko, I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I love him.” She hears no response, so she looks to Niko to see that Niko looks no different. “You knew?”
Niko shrugs. “It was obvious.”
This isn’t her story. This isn’t her life.
I should’ve done it last night. I messed up.
The conversation gets quiet. Her cereal has turned itself fat and bloated in the milk, so she abandons it, then shares another smoke with Niko while they finish their coffee. The smoke curls up her hand and into the sunlight where it looks like something more mystical than smoke. It feels like what sharing a beer must be like for boys. The microwave reads that twenty minutes was ten minutes ago.
Niko tries to stop her. “You don’t have to go.”
Her answer is stupid. “No, I said I would bring him coffee.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“No, I said I would.”
Upstairs, she stands before the door and tries to compose herself. Maybe plan out her actions, exactly how it’ll happen. Any plan she devised turns to crap when she finds him not in the bed, but the shower. She hears it and sees the sliver of light from the bathroom from underneath the door. She stands at the door and listens to his body obstruct the shower water, changing the intensity of the sound as it hits the ground. She plots again. If she walks in without the robe, it’ll send a strong message, but maybe he doesn’t want that. She settles that she’ll interrupt him—the rest is up to him.
She is at the shower door.
It takes a while for him to see her through the glass.
When he opens the door, he’s facing her. He’s wet from head to toe, his blond hair pushed behind his ears and its bottom flirting with his shoulders. There’s soap on those shoulders, and it follows several paths, sometimes becoming patches that’ve not washed away along his chest and stomach. It’s particularly sudsy at his cock, which is where he’s been washing, so it’s already pretty meaty, and it twitches once or twice after he tugs free the robe belt and sees her naked body.
He grows fully hard when he’s holding her against him.
And she forgets everything.
“I thought you were gonna bring me coffee.”
“I did. I just thought you wanted to sleep.”
He agrees. “I did.”
He also wants to wash her, which he thoroughly does. It gets him all the opportunities he could want to feel her boobs. Then he spends time with her butt, which he gets her to bend over for. He goes longer on her pussy, rubbing it somewhat like he did yesterday. It doesn’t work like it worked yesterday, and in some respects, the shower might’ve been annoying, had he not also discovered if he massages above her collar, into her neck, she loses her balance, and that she’s sensitive on the insides of her wrists, or that she gets flush when he scratches her knees.
They also talk.
“So a blowbang is when the girls only sucks their dicks, but the gangbang is when she fucks them.”
He laughs. “I think you’re figuring it out.”
She went back to the porn talk since she liked it last night.
And he likes it, too.
She’s also sitting on a corner of the shower while he washes her ankles. “How many guys are there?”
“At minimum, four. There’s usually more.”
“How many guys have you seen fuck a girl?”
He laughs again. “Maybe thirty.”
She’s shocked. Also mildly at her language. She can’t talk like normally, but the academic nature of their conversation has given her free reign to just say things. She likes it. “Thirty? I don’t get it. They stand around waiting?”
“Well, she can do several guys at one time.”
She’s confused. “How does she do that?”
“Well, she has two hands, and a mouth.”
“So she’ll jerk off some guys, blow one, and fuck another?”
He corrects her. “Two will fuck her.”
“How does that work?”
“They use her butt.”
Her mouth drops. She whispers. “They do anal?”
He smirks so large he blushes and hides himself. “Yes.”
She bets he thinks she didn’t know about ass fucking.
What did you think Ass Girl’s nickname means?
“I didn’t see that in the porno I saw.”
He extends a loose invitation. “Well, come over sometime, I’ll show you it.”
It may’ve been a loose invitation, but it was a serious one. She keeps herself silent about it, not wanting to over commit, though she can envision circumstances where she’d watch porn with him. She forgets it. She’s not done with the porno stuff. She does stop while he redirects the water on her ankles, then stands up as he says he wants to give her a splash down. “So when do the guys come on her face?”
“At the end.”
“What do you call it?”
He turns off the water and shakes out his hair. “You know what it’s called. Let’s not go there.”
She does know. “Yeah, cause a certain friend of yours calls me it all the time.”
He tries to be diplomatic.
“And, as I understand it, you call her a Cokehead Bitch.”
She pouts. “So?”
Again, he tries to be diplomatic.
“Please don’t get me in this shit between you two.”
She doesn’t want him to. She only wanted to tease him. She will handle Mackenzie and the Bukkake Queens nickname herself. The shower is turned off and she’s dripping on the mat. He’s toweling her off and having fun feeling her all over again. She’s a tad surprised she
isn’t interested in covering up. He’s also erect, like really erect, and has been for some time. He’s not done anything about it, and she’s uncertain if she should, but she’s decided to wait.
It’s always better when he’s ready.
In the bed, he gives her a big hug, and she hugs him back. His erection digs into her stomach, and when he moves, it leaves behind a sticky spot.
They’re still talking.
“I’ve always wondered, like, what you knew about what goes on between all of us girls.”
He is diplomatic again.
“I know enough to know I don’t want to know any more.”
His penis is now leaves a sticky spot on her thigh.
He’s losing interest in conversation. He’s feeling her breasts and she is nestling into his neck and stroking his hair with her hand. Pretty soon, he starts to touch her butt too, this time in the sexual way, and she feels his jaw tremble a bit when his fingers find her vagina to be already several degrees hotter than her body. It gets him too hot and he puts her hand on his penis, she grips it and starts to tug slowly.
He’s fighting it. He doesn’t want to give in.
But he’s a boy, and he does.
He’s breathing hard. “I want to have sex.”
“I know.”
It’s like he didn’t hear her. “I know some stuff happened, but I still want to, and I think, maybe, I was so close—”
She interrupts. “You didn’t.”
“I didn’t?”
“No, we stopped in time.”
For her, this means they should move forward. For him, it provides pause. He thought if he could convince her he got in last night, she would want to do it this morning. But, all in all, he feels weird about it. Last night… Well, he doesn’t know how to describe it. She lost control, then she was lost. She passed out and he didn’t know what to do. He means, sure, he made sure she was breathing and everything, but for about twenty minutes, she was gone, just sleeping, but it wasn’t sleeping.
He thought she might mention it today.
She hasn’t.
She’s so weird sometimes.
He barely speaks. “I still want to, but if you…”
He can’t say the word “can’t.” He doesn’t even want to put it out there. Not that either notices, but she’s still jerking him off. And thinking: Okay, just do it. Do it. She doesn’t know what to say, so she says, “I feel fine.”
Sykosa, Part I: Junior Year Page 27