by Anthology
She dared him to say differently, but he didn't. He stared at her, not moving. Barely blinking. He didn't look away from her, at least there was that, but it was cold comfort when she couldn't read his expression.
"What did you mean by that note?" he asked.
Maura rubbed at her burning eyes and squeezed her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose to fend off the impending headache. She had to be up for work in a couple hours, and she would be miserable all day if she didn't get enough sleep. Fuck that, she thought and looked at him. She already hadn't had enough sleep. She would already be miserable, waiting for Ian to call or message or email her during the day, knowing he wouldn't but waiting anyway.
Like a fool.
"I'm not a yo-yo, Ian. And I'm not a robot. I'm a real person, with real feelings I have never hidden from you. All I've ever done is try to be good to you. Even when I shouldn't have been, I was anyway. And don't get me wrong," she said, "I'm not blaming you. Anything I ever did was because I wanted to."
"And now you don't want to, any more?"
It was starting to feel that way. Or maybe it already felt that way and had for some time, but she'd refused to see it. "I want you to stop fucking with me. That's all. I don't think that's too much to ask, is it? That you be consistent? If you don't care about me --"
"Stop that," Ian said sharply. "You know that's not true."
Maura leveled a look at him. "Actually, I don't know that it's true. You tell me one thing, but words mean nothing without actions to back them up. When you do this, when you push me away only to pull me close again, over and over, it leaves me incapable of trusting you. I don't trust you anymore, Ian, and that makes me so immeasurably sad."
He frowned. "Me too."
"And what's worse, what's so fucking worse, is that now I no longer believe any nice thing you ever said to me."
He looked startled at that. "Maura..."
"Why should I?" She shook her head. "You say one thing, do another. You tell me you love me, and you fuck me, but then you push me away. Really hard. It hurts me when you do that."
She waited for him to say he was sorry, not because she demanded an apology, but because she'd have said it if he'd told her she hurt him. Ian looked away, hand over his mouth in his familiar way that meant he had words to say but was holding them back. Maura swallowed around her emotions.
"Sometimes," she said, "people fit each other like pieces of a puzzle. No explanation that makes sense. You can call it chemistry or kismet or coincidence. You can call it whatever you want, but the universe put us together for a reason."
"You believe that," Ian said with a small laugh. "You believe in horoscopes."
"I read horoscopes," Maura corrected. "I don't necessarily believe them."
"So, what's the reason?"
She shrugged, so far beyond tired now it was starting to hurt. She got up, turning the computer so he could watch her making coffee in her single cup maker. She put the coffee pod into the receptacle and turned leaned against the counter, arms crossed.
"I don't know. You're a blessing or a lesson, one or the other. Maybe both. All I know is," she said as the coffee hissed and spit into her cup, "I can't do this any more."
"I understand."
"You don't." Her laughter sounded like the grind of rusty gears. She warmed her hands on the mug.
"I don't want to hurt you," Ian began, but more of that grinding laughter stopped him.
"But you do, Ian. Over and over again, you do. And I just keep letting you."
He sighed. "Maybe you should stop."
"There is no more maybe about it." The coffee burned her tongue, but she drank anyway. "You want to know what that note meant?"
"Yes."
"We'll meet in the place without darkness. It's what O'Brien says to Winston in a dream," she said, relaying part of the plot to 1984. "The place where there is no darkness is the Ministry of Love. Where the Thought Police take you when you've committed thoughtcrime."
"To Room 101," Ian said.
"Yes. To Room 101. The place where there is no darkness is Room 101, and what's inside that room is the worst thing ever you can imagine." Maura put her mug on the counter. The floor seemed very far away; like Alice in her Wonderland, she was either growing or shrinking. Things had shifted sideways, yet she stayed steady on her feet. "What's in your Room 101?"
"Losing you," he whispered.
"We'll meet in the place without darkness," Maura repeated. No tears. No gasp for breath. Nothing but ice where once he'd given her fire. "Goodbye, Ian."
Then she disconnected the chat.
***
Things end. Good, bad, indifferent, that was how the world worked. Maura had known from the beginning that her relationship with Ian would probably be short and fraught with woe, but there had been a time, albeit brief and completely delusional, when she believed they might actually be able to make it work.
Oh, heart. Why you gotta break so hard?
She'd deleted his contact information from her phone and computer, along with every way she'd ever been in touch with him. The instant message program that had been their first method of communication. The phone app that had come after that. She'd deleted him from Connex, as stupid and petty as that might seem, but it wasn't to keep him from seeing her updates. It was to keep her from giving in, breaking down and seeking him out.
"All gone," she said to Shelly, showing off the phone. "Nothing left. I blocked his screen name so even if he does ping me, I won't get the message."
"What's to stop him from just calling you up? Or texting you?"
"Nothing," Maura admitted. "But he hasn't. And he won't. I know that kid, Shelly, and he won't do it."
Shelly snorted softly and swirled the clear, greenish liquid in her glass. Maura had made margaritas. It was girls' night in. Tacos, nachos, margaritas and every soft core erotic movie they could find. The Red Shoe Diaries, Lake Consequence. Old favorites she and Shelly had watched many times. Until Ian, Maura had never quite believed the kind of sex in those movies existed.
"What will you do if he does?"
Maura shrugged. "I don't know. I don't have a backup plan, really. At least, not beyond margaritas and Mexican food. Oh, and Billy Wirth."
"I'd back up on him for sure," Shelly said a little dreamily. "Back, front, upside down, whatever he wanted."
Maura burst into laughter that felt a lot like sobs. She covered them by drinking, then set the glass down to pour more from the pitcher. She licked salt from the rim of the glass and dipped a chip in the melted queso. Shelly watched her, but though they'd been friends long enough that there was no way she didn't sense Maura's emotions, she didn't call her on it.
"So...Daniel," Shelly said. Apparently that topic wasn't taboo.
This time, Maura's laugh felt a little more natural. "Uh huh."
"Don't you uh huh me. Spill it. I want to know it all." Shelly leaned forward with a gleam in her eye, ignoring the movie. "Every last freaking detail."
There'd been so many things Maura had never shared with Shelly. Details about Ian, the things he did to her and how he made her feel, specifics about his taste and how he moaned -- she'd shared similar details with Shelly lots of times about other guys, but never about Ian. Everything with him had been different than anything she'd ever done.
She didn't want to think about Ian any more.
"That's not creepy at all," Maura teased.
Shelly pretended to take offense. "Listen, who's the one who helped you use a tampon for the first time? Who held your hand when you had to take that pregnancy test?"
"Longest three minutes of my life," Maura said. "You, of course. My bestie."
"And you're going to hold back now?" Shelly sniffed. "Fine. At least tell me if you're going to see him again!"
"I'm going to see him again. I have seen him again," Maura said. "He's not leaving the country again for another month. We have dinner every couple of nights. Hang out, watch movies. Stuff like that."
Shelly looked impressed. "What about all the other dates?"
Maura shrugged. "I don't see the point in that any more, do you?"
"Now more than ever," Shelly said. Maura laughed. Shelly shook her head, looking serious. "Listen, you can't let Ian put you off dating."
"I'm not put off dating. Just the sheer quantity of it. It's exhausting, Shelly. And technically, you could say I'm dating Daniel." Though it was more like friends without benefits. They hadn't fooled around since that first night, not even when he slept in her bed. She thought he was too embarrassed to try, and she hadn't yet worked up the courage to initiate anything.
"So...what's it like? C'mon, Maura. The two of you were volcanic together. You told me once you'd never been with a man who'd ever made you come as hard as Daniel could."
That had been true. Until Ian. Maura frowned, concentrating on her drink for a few seconds. Then she sighed. "Okay. So we've fooled around a little. But we didn't fuck," she clarified when Shelly's expression brightened and she looked like she was about to say something. "He just went down on me."
"Just?" Shelly cried and wriggled on the couch until Maura had to burst into laughter. "Nobody 'just' goes down on someone else."
Maura gave her friend a confidential smirk. "Well, he does eat pussy like it's an Olympic sport."
"Guh." Shelly fell back with a sigh.
"Yeah." Maura laughed too. On the TV screen, the couple writhed around naked on the bed in slow motion. She watched for a few seconds before turning back to her friend. "I like Daniel a lot. More than I did when we were younger, I think. I mean, back then he was sexy and so sure of himself, and we had a lot of fun. But we never really talked, you know?"
"And you do now?"
"Yeah." Maura thought about that for a moment, turning over the conversation they'd had a few nights before about politics. "I mean, he's grown into a man, and I remember him as a boy."
"You're not a girl any more either, you know."
"I know. And I think that as much as we set each other on fire back then, we have the real potential to be close friends now." Maura chewed on that thought, trying to make herself clearer, but the margaritas were getting in the way. "Like...we have a lot in common, opinion-wise. We like the same movies and music, the same kind of food. He's easy to talk to. And he's a good listener. I really like him."
Shelly was silent for a moment. "And you're worried about that?"
"I am." She hadn't thought of it quite that way until now, when the blur of booze had worn away some of her inhibitions.
"Because of getting hurt?"
"Because maybe it means I'm not meant to be with Ian after all," Maura blurted. "If I could fall for someone else, and so soon. Maybe what I felt for Ian wasn't real."
"Oh, sweetie." Shelly scooted over on the couch to put an arm around her shoulders. "Don't do that to yourself. It was real."
Maura swallowed tears to give her friend an honest look. "Does that make it better, really?"
"Maybe not. But it's the truth. Honey, I've known you a long, long time. When you talked about Ian, and even the once or twice I saw you with him, you lit up."
"When we were together, everything shined," Maura whispered.
"Yes. That. It was real. What you felt for him. That doesn't mean it was meant to last, you're right. But it also doesn't mean that if you find out you like someone else that what you felt for Ian wasn't real, or true. Nothing you feel for anyone else would negate that."
She knew it intellectually, of course. Loving Ian had not cancelled anything she'd ever felt for anyone else, including her now ex-husband. "I know that. But..."
"No buts," Shelly said firmly. "Ian had his chance. He blew it, spectacularly. You gave him every opportunity, Maura. Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to let them ruin you."
"No," Maura said. "No. I don't."
***
I haven't worn this dress before, and the fabric clings to my body in a way I find a little distracting. The wind licks at the hem of it, the fluttery, gauzy fabric tickling my knees and my thighs when it floats a little too high for propriety. My legs are bare beneath it. So's my pussy. I can't recall a time when I went without panties, but today when I pulled this dress from the closet, the sheer fabric meant even my sheerest silk and lace left their lines and ruined the look. No bra, either. My nipples are diamond hard. My clit a tight knot.
I'm looking for Ian.
He's here, somewhere in the crowd. I know he is. The bass beat of dance music throbs between my legs, vibrates my chest. My heart is already skipping beats as I scan the throng for the sight of his face. Overhead, the night sky winks at me, bright with stars. The dance club is miles away from the sea but has a floor made of sand, and I'm glad I'm wearing a simple pair of sandals instead of the stilettos so many of the other women have. I'd take my shoes off altogether and walk with bare toes on the cool and gritty sand, but this isn't the ocean and the sand itself is surely filthy. So instead, I imagine the rush and press of the ocean and look for my Ian.
"Buy you a drink?" The man in front of me is handsome enough. His smile tempts mine, but I shake my head. "C'mon. One drink."
"I'm waiting for someone."
The man looks around. "Any man who'd keep you waiting is a bedamned fool."
Something seems off in his tone. His choice of words. Frowning, I watch him back away from me and wonder if he's right, if I shouldn't wait any longer. I've lost track of the time, and though I squint hard at my watch, the numbers are too small. The hands too fine. I can't tell the hour, how long I've been here. I have no idea how long I'll have to wait.
And then, there he is. There's nothing so silly as a shining ray of light or a chorus of angels, but the crowd does seem to part around him. Maybe it's just that in a sea of faces, Ian's will always stand out to me.
We dance.
Ian turns me so my back aligns with his front, my ass snugged up against his crotch. His hands on my hips. I turn my face to feel his breath on my cheek, and one arm goes behind his head so I can feel his hair with my fingers. We move with the music and the crowd, like we've all become some wild, writhing thing. I don't care about the song, the crowd, the heat rising so my skin begins to sheen with sweat. All that matters is Ian's hands on me, and he turns me to face him.
His kiss, oh, God. Ian's mouth. I fucking love his mouth so much I think I might be unable to bear it. He tastes of salt and beer and his own flavor; I would know the taste of him anywhere. His cock is hard on my belly as the people around us push in closer. My arms go over his shoulders. This close, his face is a bit of a blur, but I don't need to see his every feature with clarity to know the sight of him.
His tongue strokes mine as his hand slips between us. His knuckles press my clit through the filmy hem of my dress. He doesn't have to move his hand because the crowd moves me against him.
Ian kisses me. Over and over, the slide of his tongue on mine, the nibble of his lips. The press of him against me. I pull him closer, closer, breathing him in. Tasting him. There are people behind me, all around me, but everything is Ian. The entire writhing, grinding crowd is Ian touching me.
"Maura, Maura, what am I gonna do with you," Ian says in my ear in a voice so low I shouldn't be able to hear it over the music, but there's magic in his tone. It vibrates deep within me, subsonic. Strums me internally, resonating on some frequency reserved for him alone.
"Anything you want. Everything you want." My breath is rough in my throat, the flavor of him thick on my tongue.
I want him the way you want to breathe when you've been underwater for too long. The way you crave the kiss of winter after an inferno of a summer. I want Ian without hesitation, reservation, accusation, condemnation. I want him with everything I am and have ever been. Everything I will ever be.
His knuckles rub and rub until I shake with the pleasure of it. I want him inside me, but there's no way for that happen here, in the middle of a crowd. My body strains, yearning toward that r
elease. There's no stopping it. I can't hold it back, until at last the pleasure breaks me.
I'm looking in his eyes when I come.
"Ian," I manage to say as the crowd fades and leaves us alone, and in front of me, Ian begins to vanish too. "Ian, please don't leave me."
***
Maura woke with a start, her heart pounding, every muscle tense. The memory of the dream's pleasure still coursed through her, though there were no physical signs of her orgasm beyond an extra slickness between her legs. It had been entirely in her head.
Still, she must've moaned or said something in her sleep, because Daniel pushed up on an elbow to look down at her. "Mo?"
She'd grown out of that name a long time ago. In fact, he might've been the only person to ever call her that. She shifted in the bed, seeking the comfort of his warmth even as the uneasiness of having him in her bed made her want to curl away from him.
"Bad dream?" His breath wafted over the back of her neck. His hand pressed flat to her belly. This was the third night this week he'd slept over.
"No." She couldn't lie to him, even if it felt shitty to be dreaming about another man and climaxing so hard it woke her up. "Not bad."
He nuzzled against her, and Maura relaxed into his affection. They'd been spending so much time together over the past month, they'd fallen into the habits of a long-term couple. Hand-holding. Kissing upon greeting and leaving. Most everything but the sex part. They hadn't talked about exclusivity, and Maura had never asked if Daniel was seeing other women when he wasn't with her. Maybe knowing that even if he was, he surely wasn't fucking anyone made it easier for her not to worry.
Or maybe she didn't quite care enough.
Either way, she hadn't opened her spreadsheet in a couple weeks. She still answered texts she got from the few men she'd liked enough to exchange phone numbers with, but she hadn't even logged in to her Luvfinder account to check if she had any offers. She'd thrown herself into work and catching up on the myriad home projects she'd promised herself she'd finish...she'd given up quickly enough on the crocheted afghan she'd wanted to make using all the leftover yarn she'd inherited from her grandmother, but she was the proud owner of completely reorganized cabinets.