by Alisa Mullen
“I’m hungry. How about we eat some spaghetti?” he suggested with a devilish smile creeping on his face as I let his words sink in.
Oh. The Spaghetti.
Oh. OH!
The mushrooms.
Oh!
“I haven’t ever. I mean, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know anything about them.” I was floundering. His return had been a whirlwind of emotions. I was so happy to have someone around. Lord knows I was sick of talking to Grace.
“Do you trust me, Emily?” His smile was gone and he looked so sincere. I nodded my head slowly.
We had another small stare off until I watched Johnny go to the refrigerator and pull out the pot with the Post-It note on it. He grabbed two large forks from a nearby drawer and came back to the table again.
Chapter Fifteen
Johnny
Playful stare offs with Emily were so much fucking fun. She was a mess and I loved it. It took all of the pressure off of my own crazy. Somehow she hadn’t noticed and if she did, she said nothing about the fact that I was completely obsessed with all things Julia Delaney. I needed to take those pictures down soon. A slight pinch occurred in the pit of my stomach and I drew in a deep breath.
Nevertheless, Emily and I needed to try again. There was always tomorrow and all that shit. We needed a clean slate, a fresh start, a new beginning. How else does one clear the palate than with mushrooms? They made even the most confused humans see everything perfectly clear. I knew it would be a good experience for Emily, just as long as I watched her the entire time to be sure she didn’t have a bad trip. I had never personally seen one but I knew I had to hover and I was not complaining about that one little bit.
The stare off began again when I held out a fork to Emily from across the table, over the mushroom laced spaghetti. It was laughable, actually. Mushrooms already tasted absolutely disgusting. Mushrooms in spaghetti? Damn, this was not going to be pretty.
“We’re running out of time. Let’s do this. Come on, Emily,” I urged her.
Emily’s eyes blinked a few times as she realized that we were having a stare-off for a reason and not to just look into each other’s eyes for pleasure. Stare-offs with Emily were my new favorite past time. She cleared her throat and very prettily, took the fork. She placed a napkin from the table in her lap and I stifled a gut busting laugh. She was about to eat hallucinogenic drugs and she was worried about getting sauce on her ugly paisley pajamas? I might have just fallen in love with this girl.
Whoa. What the fuck? Did I just think that about someone other than Jules?
Yes, I suppose I did since my heart wouldn’t stop drumming so hard.
I thought I would have to force her to eat but she went straight for the parts of the spaghetti that had the mushrooms prominently in the sauce. I watched her with rapt attention as she placed those perfect lips around the fork and food; like I had imagined on the bus.
My dick got hard as she closed her eyes and groaned against the food. I couldn’t tell if she thought it was good or if it was so bad that she was trying to cover up the distaste with verbal distraction. Fuck, she was distracting me. I knew my jaw was dropped open. I felt the little beads of saliva at each corner of my mouth, and I definitely felt that my favorite jeans were way too tight for my dick at the moment.
“This is absolutely disgusting,” she finally said, bringing the napkin to her mouth. “I never thought to taste it because I make spaghetti like Martha Stewart. Well, usually.”
Her face dropped with disappointment.
I didn’t understand but her words brought me out of my Emily daze and I went in with my fork. It was fucking gross.
“No matter how you eat mushrooms, the cow shit, molded taste overrides every other taste.”
Her face lit up. “So it wasn’t my cooking? I didn’t fail?”
I coughed on a piece of mushroom that had classically got caught in my back molar. I shook my head as I tried to fork the piece out of my tooth.
“Even Martha Stewart couldn’t make these mushrooms taste any better. You didn’t fail, Emily. This is actually perfect,” I reassured her with a small smile.
“How long until… you know… we trip out?” She sounded a little scared and I needed to squash that thought right away.
“It will happen when it happens. Right now just focus on eating and talking to me, okay?” I asked as I looked into her eyes. Her eyes were so soft and welcoming. Eyes never change and I could tell that even Jules probably loved Emily as a childhood friend.
“Tell me about your relationship with Jules,” Emily said as she took another bite and cringed.
I stopped my fork halfway to my mouth and closed my eyes.
How could she possibly know that I was just thinking about Jules? What the hell was I doing, eating mushrooms with Emily? One of the times I ate mushrooms, I had fallen in complete love with Jules. I debated with myself whether to tell Emily.
“Jules and I were college friends. We formed a band. I took mushrooms one night with her in our apartment and we both realized we had more than just friendly feelings for one another. Our band’s name was born that night.” I stopped to think as I took another bite. I thought about the My Little Pony shows that Jules and I were enthralled in. I thought about how I had fucked her on every surface of our apartment that weekend. It was exhilarating and such a high. Alas, everything that goes up must come falling back down with a crash.
I tried to put Emily’s face in my mind’s picture of that long ago night and I inwardly bitch slapped myself. Emily was too classy for the raw, savage sex Jules and I shared. Emily deserved white, silky sheets with candles, and Neil Diamond singing in stereo - our own fitting theme song. I’d please every inch of her body and not stop until she knew, without a doubt, that she was perfect. I pulled Emily’s fork away and picked up the rest of the spaghetti.
“We ate enough.” My tone was firm and resolute. If we ate the whole pot, we would be flipping out and I wasn’t interested.
“Okay,” she answered quietly as I turned on the garbage disposal and dumped the rest down the sink. I threw some detergent in the pan and turned around to look at her. She was cleaning the area on the kitchen table with her napkin and making sure sauce wasn’t staining it. She was so frigging cute.
“So Jules and I became an item,” I started again, obviously startling Emily from her cleaning reverie.
“We were happy, I guess,” I shrugged. “I had never been in a serious relationship before her so I thought we were good. On one of our first tours, I got pretty fucked up and fucked another girl.”
It wasn’t a pretty story and I wasn’t going to sugar coat it. I hated myself every day after and alleviated that guilt by fucking more and more but I wasn’t going to tell Emily that.
“Wait, the magazines said that you two were engaged. Was that before?” She looked really confused and I had to smile at that. It was just another dig at the type of jackass I was. I was so sick of being a jackass. I was so sick of reliving those memories over and over again. Would she ever stop haunting me?
“I got her back,” I said on an exhale and crossed my legs. “But, well - she didn’t really want me then either. I mean, she did. We had remained friends so falling back into a relationship was easy. She was tired of the road and all the bull shit that came with. There was a guy named Brennan. He was all she thought about but he was married and that was really fucking hard on her. So, in the end, I fucked his wife so that they could be together.”
Emily sputtered. “You what?”
“I saw the way she watched Brennan. I could feel the love they had for each other. I wanted it so badly for myself that I got jealous. I figured that one of us should be happy so I fucked his wife after a show. Brennan left her and Jules left me and the band. I hadn’t expected that. I thought we would go back to being friends but I really lost her.”
I drew in a breath. I don’t think I had told Dr. Fuck Nuts this much in all the sessions combined. Emily made me want to ex
pel all of my sins.
“Since then,” I continued. “I’ve become obsessed with her. Now I know I shouldn’t be because she married Brennan and they look so happy together and it blows. I want her back.” I finished because I was not going to tell Emily that I had Jules followed after I found out where she had escaped to. I wasn’t going to tell her about how the guy I hired to follow her also fell in lust with her. I remember telling myself that I needed to know if she was with Brennan. I needed to know that I had done the right thing.
“That sounds so… childish and immature. You weren’t a martyr, if that is what you want people to think,” Emily said with a pitiful look.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t childish,” I grinned. “In fact, games were my favorite pastime up until the day I destroyed my friendship and my band. I’ll never be a martyr. I’m too selfish. I think part of me wanted her to want me and I don’t know. I was too jealous. I couldn’t think clearly. Sometimes, I still can’t.”
“Is she happy now?” Emily asked, now looking genuinely interested.
“She’s so happy that it makes me sick,” I answered stonily.
Chapter Sixteen
Emily
Something was changing inside of me. Subtle and undeniable, there was no turning back to the ways of the old Emily. And I didn’t want to.
I was so focused on Johnny, his face, his arms as they moved around, and his really messed up story, that I hadn’t realized I moved from the kitchen to the couch. I also felt the need to brush my hair. I brushed so much that the rigid bristles of the brush felt like it was an extension of my tingling scalp. I needed a scalp massage. Those were divine.
Johnny had positioned himself on the couch and was looking out into space. He appeared lost in the conversation we had about Julia and their break up. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around his motives for sleeping with Brennan’s wife but I could clearly tell that he was lost. He was a lost little boy and I wanted to fix that.
“How long are you going to keep the wall of Julia up?” I asked as I closed my eyes to the feel of the delicious bristles on the back of my head.
Johnny shrugged like he hadn’t even noticed that I was in the room He grabbed the brush from me and started to sing a rendition of “Died in Your Arms” by Cheap Trick into it. I giggled and giggled and giggled. My face was hot and I looked down at my shirt to see that the paisleys were swimming. It kind of scared me so I tore off my shirt. I had forgotten I was only wearing a camisole with no bra but who cared? Johnny wasn’t paying any attention. He had morphed one eighties song into another and I clapped with silly glee. He was my own personal rock star for the evening and it made me feel so special.
Johnny stopped abruptly and looked me up and down, taking in the fact I’d rid myself of my demon paisley shirt.
“Nice,” he said as he drew out the word, making it pop with the last sound. I cringed. Nice. How would he know that one word was the epitome of all I was? He couldn’t – unless Jules had told him. I looked over to the Ouija board and gave it a stern look. You stay put, Gracie. Don’t mess with my mood tonight, I thought.
“Iggy Pop once said that really good music isn’t just to be heard, you know? It’s almost like a hallucination,” Johnny said as he pointed the brush at my nipples that had clearly made an appearance to this party. “My question is why can’t we enjoy music, hallucination, and hearing?”
We both thought about that for a while. I studied my hair brush in his hands while he studied something on my face.
“I personally like to listen to music with my hearing,” I said lamely, for no other reason than to break the annoying silence.
Johnny’s pure smile was heart-stopping beautiful. He loved what I had said. I repeated it in my mind and yes, it had been really amazing. I liked to listen to music with my hearing. Wow, that was so deep. I felt like the smartest woman in Manhattan and Johnny knew it, too. In a gentleman like manner, Johnny handed me the hairbrush, walked to his sound system, turned on some light music, then like he was walking on water, came to sit right next to me.
“Touch me, Emily,” he said softly. His eyes were warm. As if I was back at summer camp, my heart rate kicked up and it was like I was a little girl touching a little boy for the first time.
“Why?” I managed to squeak out. I started to brush my hair again and immediately hated it. I looked at the brush in disgust and threw it on the ground.
“If you touch me, you will enjoy the feel of my skin. I promise.” His eyes never left my face; even when I turned to throw the brush, he actually moved closer to me. My palms were really clammy and cold. I rubbed them on the plush couch and then, very tentatively, my fingers skated along his left forearm.
I closed my eyes and ran my whole hand up and down his arm. It was so warm and his muscles were defined enough for me to run my fingers in and along the ridges. The hair on his forearm was soft but not like a woman’s. He still had the man feel. He was a man and I was feeling a man’s strong flesh and his reaction was obvious. He sighed a lot with enjoyment. He groaned when I touched the inside of his elbow, like it may have been a ticklish spot at one time.
I opened my eyes to find him staring at me with purpose. “What do you think?” he asked like I had the answers to the meaning of life.
“I think I’m confused. I really enjoy touching you, Johnny. It’s…well, it’s nice,” I said as I blew out a sexually frustrated breath.
Moments passed. Hours flew? Sly timed touches. Serious, sensual and calculated looks. We were inching. Close now. Johnny’s body felt so wonderful up against mine. My beating heart affected my rasped breath. I couldn’t figure out what I had to do next. What did I want to happen next? I shivered at the thought of being with sexy Johnny Lennox. I warmed at the thought of being with the complex man that let me couch surf.
Being that I was on drugs, I struggled with how fast or how slow the next moments went by. The most prominent actions were terribly disappointing. I knew when the Ouija board flew across the floor. I registered that Johnny quickly backed up to the farthest part of the couch. Was he trying to get away from me or her? As I anticipated, I dropped my eyes down to the rapid fire of the triangle indicator as it spelled out the same word over and over again. N-I-C-E
Stupid me, I was so damn close to kissing Johnny again. I knew he had wanted to. Of course, Grace had to go and ruin it for me again. Her timing was always in poor taste. I wanted to scream in frustration because this was the first time she made herself known in front of someone else. I would have to explain this to Johnny and I was feeling good. This night was about to take a turn for the worse due to Grace. I just hoped I didn’t end up out on the street while on drugs. That wouldn’t be good.
Chapter Seventeen
Johnny
I don’t think I was breathing. My heart was pushing out too much blood and I was faint. I was scared to death – quite literally.
“Johnny,” Emily started to speak calmly. Calmly. Why was Emily so fucking calm?
“Are you okay?” she asked as she tried to reach for me. I had backed myself into the corner of the couch like a frightened cat.
I looked from the board and up to Emily with astonishment. Okay, so I was freaked the fuck out and she was totally chill. What the fuck was up with that?
“Do I look okay?” I asked very slowly and shaky. She scooted over to me and even though the Ouija board was still moving a mile a minute, she hardly registered it as she came to take care of me.
She took her fingers and smoothed the frown lines on my forehead. I felt them. It was me being completely confused and baffled. I got frown lines often but never during a mushroom trip, which by the way was at its peak at that very moment. She moved in closer and placed her firm lips onto mine. I felt her inhale through her nose and when she exhaled, she moaned a little, totally taking my mind off of the freaked out game on the floor. I wrapped my hand around her orange haired head and drew her closer, opening my mouth, trying to wiggle my tongue into her mouth. She gaspe
d a little and I went in for the kill. Our tongues met and she was fucking delicious. I felt like a horny little teenage boy and I kissed her with tenderness and humility. She fit me perfectly. We started for second base and before I knew it, she was jumping up and wringing out her fingers.
“I have to stop. It stopped so I have to stop.”
Emily was officially a nut case. Maybe I should introduce her to Dr. Fearless Quack.
“What the fuck just happened?” I laid there on the couch, my shirt half way up my stomach, an erection clearly on display, and the Ouija board back in its place on the bookshelf.
“Grace Miller is what happened. She and that,” she pointed at the general area of the Ouija board without taking her sad eyes off me, “never leave me alone. I mean, it doesn’t happen every day but I think that there’s a method. She comes out to haunt me in the worst times, Johnny. I didn’t know what to do and you looked so scared.”
“So you attempted to molest me?” I asked, completely confused.
Emily covered her mouth with her four fingers and tried not to laugh. She failed. Within seconds, she was flat on her back on the ground, laughing so hard that I wasn’t even sure she knew what she was laughing about.
“Molest you?” Her question didn’t need an answer because she kept on laughing like it was possibly the funniest joke that was ever told. It wasn’t. I wanted her to molest me.
“Okay, so Grace Miller was the girl that was murdered when you were young,” I started. I needed answers and my buzz was killing off brain cells by the second. I had to know before I turn into a pile of mush, coming down off the high.
Emily sat straight up. “How do you know her?” Her face went from reddened laughter to pale and scared.
“Jules told me all about her and the Ouija board. Each of you asked what you would be when you grew up. Right?” I inched my body closer to her on the couch and signaled for her to come closer. My dick hadn’t settled down and I still wanted her close to me.