"Nothing with anyone else anyway." She wiggled her fingers at him with a cheeky smile.
He felt his face grow warm and turned back to the chart for want of something else to look at besides her and the mental image those fingers were conjuring up.
Her voice interrupted his lewd thoughts. "Are you pleased?"
Toby swallowed deeply before turning back to her. "Why should what I feel about this matter to you?"
"How you feel about this is the only reason why I have done it! I don't want you to be disgusted with me anymore." Charlotte rested her hand on his arm, rubbing it lightly back and forth.
Toby placed his own hand over hers, stilling it, her words cutting him deeply. "I have never been disgusted with you. Not ever."
Charlotte looked up at him, her eyes wide. She smiled, but it was a sad smile. One that hurt to look at. "Disgust was what I saw on your face that night."
"If my face looked at you with disgust then my face was wrong." Toby reached out with his other hand to touch Charlotte on the cheek. "I honestly have never felt disgusted by you. I promise." She leaned into his hand and he caressed her face gently. "You do know that you can't actually grow your virginity back, don't you?"
She laughed, turning her head slightly, placing a kiss onto his palm before stepping back. "You don't know that for sure. Could be someone has just never tried it. I bet Miss Prim is a virgin."
Toby flinched, but smiled nevertheless. "That's not really my place to say."
"What's she saving herself for? Marriage? Love? Death?" Charlotte's eyes twinkled as she teased him.
"Stop it. I'm not going to make fun of Anne with you. She's a really nice girl."
Charlotte rolled her eyes. "I know that! She is a pearl, a true treat of a girl with impeccable manners, the neatest of hair, the most perfect of grades, morals that shine, and a virginity that remains intact. You would never have to fear who has been there before you Toby, she's perfect for you. I admire her. Girls like her always get the best guys, the one's that matter the most." She turned away from the poster and crossed the room to rummage through her desk drawer.
Toby watched her from behind, feeling as though his heart was in his mouth. He wanted to tell her it didn't make a difference to him anymore if she was a virgin or not, but she would take it the wrong way and he wasn't ready to leave her just yet. They spent time like this together so infrequently. When he wasn't playing sport or studying, he spent time with Anne. Charlotte was right about her, she was a nice girl. A really nice girl. She was pretty to look at with her long blond hair and bright blue eyes; she kept her school skirts to knee length, always wore her tie with its many pins announcing her many roles within the student council; if she couldn't be found around the grounds at lunch time, then he would be sure to find her at the library, either studying herself, or tutoring others. She was a perfect plastic cut out girlfriend, and he had no idea really why he was even bothering. All he ever thought about was Charlotte, with her ridiculously short school skirts, untucked shirts, and pin less tie; her messy dark hair and black nail polish; the way the inside of her mouth would glint every time he caught sight of her pierced tongue, the newest addition to her pursuit of piercings in random places. She was the opposite of plastic. She was uncontained and spirited, foul mouthed and often rude, late to class and never seen doing anything at lunch time other than laughing with her friends while sneaking out of the back gate. She was all he ever wanted every minute of the day and night, an invasion against his sanity.
Charlotte found what she had been searching for in her drawer and turned around, a parcel in her hands. "Here." She held it out to him. "This is your real present."
He leaned forward and took the package from her. Inside was a cassette tape and a book. The cassette was Zooropa, the new album by U2, only just released but not yet available in Australia. He smiled at it and then up at her, genuinely pleased with this gift.
She was looking at him with a hopeful expression. "You said you wished you had it."
He nodded. "I did. Did you get it from Jenna?"
"I asked her for it as soon as I read about it coming out. It's very different to their other music. I thought we might be able to listen to it together on your new stereo." She looked down at her foot then, tracing it back and forth over the carpet, the breach between them ever present.
Toby looked back down into his parcel and pulled out the book. It was an old book, with a cloth cover, beautifully embossed on the front with gold leafing. Toby knew enough about books to recognise this one as being special. He expected this was something else she'd had to search far and wide for. Her consideration to him with these gifts was touching, the unexpectedness making it even more meaningful. He traced the title with his finger. "A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway." He glanced up at her. "You think I can read this? That I will understand a single word of what he says?"
Charlotte shrugged. "It's a love story, set in the Great War. It's beautiful and tragic and I think you'll like it a lot. I did, anyway."
"Thank you. For these." He smiled then, catching her gaze. "And for the chart. I'm very impressed by your commitment to growing your own virginity back."
She smirked. "You can make fun of me all you like. I don't care."
"I'm not making fun of you." He put the book and cassette down onto the top of her dresser, crossing over to one of her book shelves. He followed along with his finger, reading the titles, her reading tastes as eclectic as the rest of her room. She traversed a path that veered from highbrow classics to hard erotica, with a fair bit of popular fiction thrown in between. He spoke to her over his shoulder, feeling safer asking this question while not looking at her. "Why do you read these sex stories?"
"What sex stories?"
"The one's like this?" He turned to her, feeling bold, a book held up in his hand. "What draws you to them?"
She crossed the room and shut her door. He tensed. What had he just gotten himself into? Approaching him, she took the book from his hand, running her finger over the title on the cover. "Beauty's Release." She read the title to him, as though he may not have read it just moments before himself.
"Anne Rice, the author of The Vampire Chronicles, wrote this under a different name to preserve her identity at the time. She wasn't ashamed of having written these books, rather wanted to keep them separate from her others, lest people judge her based on factors they don't understand. This is not just a sex story. It's an erotic fairy-tale. It's filled with all sorts of things, sex performed in so many ways, both heterosexual and homosexual. It contains acts that are so extreme they stretch your imagination. I read it, and others like it, because they make me feel alive. Sensual. And hot. It's not just about the sex, it's more than that. It's the words and how they're strung together to give you this visual that you actually feel. This book in particular is as much about the mental as the physical. It's about how people feel about sex and different types of sex and it taps into something deep within a person, a place where many people might not want to go within themselves and their own sexuality."
Charlotte took a hold of Toby's hand and pulled him toward the bed, patting the mattress beside her. He sat, leaving a small space between them. She flipped through the book, scanning and searching until she seemed to find what she was looking for. Her voice as she started to read was soft, slightly husky, and even toned.
He listened to the words she was reading, but did not process all of them, concentrating instead on the sound of her voice and the soft blush that had appeared on her cheeks. He let his gaze wander, taking note of the way her dress was pulled tight across her chest. As he watched her, the rate of her breathing seemed to accelerate, and the blush staining her cheeks moved down over her neck. Her voice lowered, her breaths hitching every so often, and she shifted slightly, as though something was now making her unable to sit still. Toby tuned into the words slipping out of her mouth and became aware of the nature of them, and he realised he was witnessing the very reason why she r
ead these books. Instead of telling him, she was showing him. He thought about the chart on her wall, her commitment to abstaining from sex. For him. Because she thought that was what he wanted from her. He thought about the gifts she had just given him, a cassette that had been difficult to get and an antique book about a tragic love story that had touched her enough to make her want him to read it also. He thought about her, about the contradiction of her, and he knew that he would never come across another girl like her, and for that reason alone, she made the risk of being with her worth it. Maybe there was a way to have everything you wanted.
If you were very careful.
With no further thought he placed his hand on her thigh. She paused.
"Keep reading." Moving closer to her, she continued on. He dropped his other hand onto her shoulder and sat still, listening to her, feeling the warmth of her beneath his hands. As she continued to read, words that conjured up an image so vivid, he moved his hand along her thigh, up under her dress, resting it in the place where her hip began. He moved his other hand down from her shoulder, pulling the strap of her dress along with it, replacing the fabric with his hand, his fingertips tracing along her skin, brushing over another piercing, one he didn't know she even had. He placed a soft kiss onto her shoulder, whispering into her ear, "Keep reading." With his other hand, he teased the waistband of her underpants, skimming his fingers along the elastic until he slipped one inside, touching her where the book was making her hot. He added another finger and pressed his lips to her neck. She stopped reading, placing the book onto the bedside table.
"Do you understand now?" Her voice was shaking, her breathing laboured. "Why I read them?"
He nodded against her skin. "Yes."
"Would Anne let you do this to her?"
He shook his head. "No." He didn't want to think about Anne and what she wouldn't let him do.
"Do you wish she would?"
He licked the side of her neck, shaking his head again. "No."
"Would you like me to read to you again sometime?"
He nibbled on her ear, his fingers plunging deeper inside of her. "Yes."
"Nobody needs to know that we do this, Toby. It can stay between us. Something just for us."
His only response was to trail his mouth down to her chest, to take that piercing and what it was attached to into his mouth, his tongue twirling around it, a fantasy made real. She slipped her fingers into his hair, resting her face against the silky strands, shifting slightly to open her legs wider, barely suppressing a moan as he obliged her. "You're like me, Toby," she whispered. "You like this. You understand, that with the right person, this can be a complete experience. Something more."
It was an experience alright, one that he might regret in the morning, but for now he was fixed in place, powerless to do anything other than worship Charlotte and what she was letting him do to her body.
"Happy birthday, Toby." Her voice was as soft as a caress.
Best birthday ever. No question.
Charlotte skipped school the next day. This was not hard to get by her mother, she almost never took a day off school, so Iris was unconcerned when Charlotte said she wasn't well and wanted to stay home. She simply took her daughter at her word and left for work. Charlotte lay in bed for an extra hour, getting up long past nine. After potting around the house for a while, eating toast, listening to the radio while washing the dishes, and then hanging out the washing her mother had left in the machine, Charlotte went back up to her room to lie down again. She changed her mind though once she was at her doorway, entering Toby's room instead, and lying down on his bed. Turning her face into his pillow, she inhaled deeply. She lay like that for a long time, inhaling the scent of him, wrapping herself in his sheets, sinking into his bed, wishing for every moment that he was here with her.
He had pulled back from her again last night. Fled the room, shutting himself away, from both her and what he really wanted. Charlotte wished now she had never started reading that book to him. What they had done together was the most intense experience of her entire life, yet in the end, it had been too much. She had scared him off again, misread the signals, and driven him right back to that stupid fucking dishrag, Anne. It was taking all of her self-control on a daily basis not to knock the bitch to the ground, just so she could wipe that smug, pink lip glossed smile, right off her stupid Barbie face. Charlotte buried her face into her hands, tears stinging her eyes. She let out a loud, shriek of frustration. He had ruined her. Completely ruined her. She couldn't even so much as look at another guy anymore, not after the way he had called her out as a slut. She would die with her virginity grown back and the memory of his hands and lips on her as the only thing to sustain her until it was all over.
And maybe some of Anne's blood on her hands.
Charlotte had thought for a brief mad moment that she might talk to her mother about it all. But Toby's fear of her parents knowing about them held her back; he would be furious, and also, if she were entirely honest with herself, she was not as confident about her father's reaction as she was about her mother's, and anything at all she told her mother was likely to be almost immediately disclosed to her father. That was just the way they were.
She reached over and took up the book from his bedside table, the one she had given him last night. He had started reading it, a page bookmarked with a scrap of paper. She ran her finger down the page, reading the part he had read up to. On a whim, she got up and crossed over to his desk, searching out a pen. On the scrap piece of paper she wrote some words:
You have ruined me for anyone else.
It was overly dramatic and not at all like the sort of thing she would normally write on a note for a boy. But Toby did not evoke normal feelings within her. He hadn't right from the start. He evoked far more. Marking his place again with the note, she straightened his bed before leaving his room, flipping his pillow to hide the damp spots from her tears.
Charlotte was lying out by the pool when Toby got home from school. She heard the door shutting, movement within the house, taps running, footsteps getting closer, and then he was there, standing over her, his face full of concern.
"Why weren't you at school?" He collapsed into the lounger beside her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. While his tone had been demanding, his expression was full of concern.
She shrugged. "I just needed a day off." She closed the book she had been reading. Great Expectations, one of her favourites. Reading about Pip made her think of Toby. She imagined herself as Estella, but as a far more sensual and welcoming Estella, one that would not have let Pip go, no matter what Miss Havingsham, or society, might have insisted.
"I missed you." He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling, dimples showing.
She tried to ignore the leap her heart made at the sight of his face looking at her in that way. He was dangerously appealing, and she was hopelessly addicted. Well and truly ruined. Endeavouring to hold onto some small shard of her own dignity, she regarded him coolly. "You never come anywhere near me at school so I find that hard to believe."
"I always know you're there. I watch you all the time. My eyes missed you today."
She smiled at that, unable to help herself. He was adorable when he teased her. She lay her head back on the lounger, content with just being near him again.
"I broke up with Anne today."
Charlotte tried not to feel excited about this, but it was useless. Her heart thudded, heat flooded her armpits, and a jittery sensation of butterflies pushed its way into her stomach. "What did you tell her?" She leaned forward eagerly, hoping he had really let Anne down, so much so that she may have even cried.
"That I didn't want go out with her anymore."
"Was she upset?" Charlotte probed, unashamed at her inner glee.
"Not particularly. She said she thought it might be for the best. That we had been moving along a bit too fast and that things were in danger of getting a little bit out of control." He grinned then and Charlotte smirk
ed.
"What did you do to her? Mess up her pink lip gloss with a kiss and try to touch her on the boob through five buttoned up blouses and cardigans?" Charlotte rolled her eyes. Anne was a freak.
"It was an accident!" Toby laughed and looked away. "Seriously, she was okay. It was never much of anything." He looked back at Charlotte. "She's not really my type."
Charlotte licked her lips. "What's your type?" Her heart beat faster with excitement. She loved this game he liked to play with her, this cat and mouse exchange. The knowledge that Anne was no longer a threat boosted her confidence. It was pathetically galling to have been in the position of competing with someone like Anne.
Toby stared at her, his eyes wandering down the length of her body. "The type of girl who reads me stories at bedtime."
Charlotte did not trust herself to speak. If she did, she would likely ruin this moment and then he would run again. Always running from her. She waited him out.
"The type of girl who tries to grow her virginity back for me even though I don't even care that she no longer has it. The type of girl who makes me laugh without even trying to. The type of girl who makes me feel like there is no one else in the world quite like me." Toby reached out with a finger and touched Charlotte on her arm lightly. "You make me feel important."
"That's how you make me feel," Charlotte responded, her voice no more than a whisper. She could barely breathe. She was so close. So close to getting what she craved more than anything else.
Toby put his whole hand onto her arm, cupping her elbow. "If we do this, we need to keep it to ourselves. Just like you said last night. I'm still worried about your parents, so no friends can know. At school we need to act the same as we always have, and in front of your parents, we can't let on anything at all. I mean it. I won't do this with you if you can't give me that." He looked at her in all seriousness, his tone brooking no argument.
Selling the Drama Page 5