by Shayla Black
He could fuck any girl he wanted. That party was full of pussy for guys like him. Why me? I wanted to ask, but he still had his hand over my mouth. The other hand pulled my knees apart.
“You’re such a pretty little thing. Think you’re so tough. Everybody wants you. Did you know? We talk about it. How we want you and you don’t give it up. Well, now we can talk about how I got you to give it up.”
I breathed hard through my nose, my hands curled into his jacket. I didn’t know how to get away as he kept saying things meant to flatter and arouse me.
“I see those nipples under your shirt. So tight. Baby, you’re so sexy. You’re gonna want it so bad in a few minutes. You’re gonna beg for it. Don’t fight it.” He pushed his hand up the inside of my thigh, fingers reaching into my shorts, touching my skin. My actual pussy.
I kicked, and one of my denim wedges came off.
“See?” he said. “Not dipped in gold.”
I squealed and squirmed anew, and he got the crotch of my shorts in his fist and pulled. I slid onto the carpet, and my shorts came down to mid-thigh. I opened my mouth to scream, but he shoved four fingers in it, blocking the sound.
There was a slap from somewhere, and I thought he’d hit me, but I was wrong. I could smell and hear the party, and suddenly Hawk was off me. I gulped for air. I pushed him away but only swung in the air. I was just completing an action I couldn’t a second before.
“Hey, man!” Hawk shouted, but it was too late.
He bounced off the closet door, and Strat punched him in the face. The two girls from the kitchen were in the doorway. The one with a lipstick-smeared face ran away, and the other stood in shock and horror as Strat pulled his fist back again. The muscles of his back tensed and stretched, moving the musical staffs like undulating waves.
It landed with a crunch. The girl screamed and looked at me, which was when I realized my shorts and underwear were right above my knees.
“Tell him you wanted it!” the girl screeched from the doorway.
“What?”
“He’s gonna kill him!” she shouted.
As if in answer, I heard a crack and the closet doors rattling. I tried to get up, and my hand landed on one of my denim wedges. I landed on my elbow.
I didn’t feel anything. That was my normal state of being, but this particular numbness covered confusion and hurt. I got to my knees as Strat hit Hawk again.
The girl who had been in the doorway was pretty brave. She got between the two and tried to push Strat away. She definitely made it harder for him to get a clear shot, and the time she bought was enough to get Indy in the room.
It all happened so fast, with such complexity, that my shorts were still down. That’s what stopped Indy in his tracks. Not the blood smeared across the Grammy-winner’s face. Not his partner’s pulled back fist. But me. My naked body.
Shit.
I pulled up the shorts.
Indy turned to Strat and put his hand on his shoulder and pushed, wedging himself between Strat and his punching bag.
“What’s happening?” Indy said it so gently, it was a harmony of a hundred thousand heavenly tones.
“Fuck him.” Strat spun to me, and Indy followed.
I was on my knees, butt-to-heels, arms crossed over my chest. “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.” Strat’s words were clipped.
With his eyes, Indy took me in, then his friend, then turned to Hawk, who was just getting his feet under him with the help of the girl with the smeared lipstick.
“Get out,” Indy said, swinging his arm wide. “All of you. Out.” Indy helped me up. He looked me in the eye. “What did he give you?”
“Lude.”
He shook his head. “I wish Strat killed him.”
Oh fuck. Was I going to cry?
For the love of fuck.
Stop it.
He put his hand on the back of my neck. The next thing he said was so gentle and strong, and his voice sounded like a layer of gravel floating on the deep blue sea.
“You’re safe now.”
The sea rose, moved forward, curved to bubbling white at the top, and dropped on me. I couldn’t stop the stream of emotions any more than I could have used matchsticks to hold up a tidal wave.
* * * *
Feelings. Joy. Lust, fear, gratitude surprise arousalhatedisgustangerlovelovelove.
Lubricated with Quaalude and a narrowly avoided rape, they crushed me into sentence fragments. I couldn’t get anything out that made sense. I was crying a flood of shit I’d held on to for months. Maybe years. Maybe forever.
The room was empty except for Indy and me. Strat had taken Hawk out by the collar. Indy had shouted out and closed the door behind all the gawkers.
Indy took me by the chin and looked in my eyes. It was getting dark, and I was covered in tears, but he saw enough to let my face go. “They’re dilating already.”
I’m fine. I thought it but couldn’t speak.
He picked me up from the shoulders and under the knees. My other wedge fell off as he carried me
where are you taking me
to the futon, where he tried to set me down
I don’t think so
but I held onto his neck and pulled him down until his face filled my vision
see? I’m not crying anymore
and he put me down but stayed close. He looked reluctant, but his pupils were like bowling balls. He was with me on whatever plane I was on. The pupils didn’t lie. He’d popped whatever I’d been fed, or some other inhibition-reducing drug.
is it now? Make it now
He smelled like a man. My brain wasn’t making sentences but
musk and sweat and chlorine from the pool
the scent alone drove a spike of desire between my legs so hard it was almost painful. I arched my back from it, and my eyes fluttered and my lips parted and
“It’s the lude, Cin.”
everything felt good while the potential for more good feeling seemed like a limitless void I could fill right now, right there. I put my hand between my legs and rubbed myself over my shorts because
oh God so good so good
all the void was inside me, and I had to fill it up. He had to fill it up. He had to. He was beautiful, and I loved him. The little voice inside my head that said that was the drugs talking. I knew that voice was on to something, but I didn’t care.
I took Indy’s hand and put it between my legs. I was so hot he sucked air between his teeth when his fingers landed there.
“I want you,” I whispered, suddenly aware enough to put together three words.
“No, you don’t. It’s the—”
“The lude. I know. I can say what I feel.”
I spread my legs and
are you really doing this?
moved his hand under the crotch, and his fingers pushed the rest of the way through, until he felt how wet I was.
“Holy—”
“Oh my—”
“—shit.”
“—God!”
He ran his fingers along my seam, and the second time over my clit, I exploded, mouth open, silent, muscles tightening, knees bent.
It was the most powerful, yet unsatisfying orgasm I’d ever had. I needed more. I was empty. Full of emotions. Full of joy and lust and a swirling ambition, and in the vortex of those was a centripetal void shaped like his body.
He thought for a second/million years and put his lips on mine, opening his mouth, giving me his tongue.
This is it.
I trusted him. The weight of his body, the thrust of his hips pushing the shape of his dick to me. I grinded against him as if it was my job. I was going to come all over again, clawing at his shirt, pulling it over his head. The arousal was so deep I couldn’t see past it.
“How old are you, Margie?”
“Eighteen.” I pulled off my tank top. “Give or take.” I wasn’t in the habit of wearing a bra, and I didn’t even have the shirt all the way off before I fel
t his teeth on my nipples.
“I’m twenty,” he said.
“Nice to meet you.”
He pulled my shorts and underpants off in one move and kneeled between my open legs. His bare chest had a dusting of brown hair and a tattoo of a treble clef with a bird over his heart. I reached for his waistband, but my arms weren’t long enough.
He grabbed my wrists and put them over my head, pressing them to the wall, and kissed me. “I’ve wanted you for a long time.”
“I know.”
“I shouldn’t,” he said. “You’re not straight.”
“Neither are you.”
“True, true.”
He rolled off me and lay on his back. He hooked his thumbs in his shorts, picked up his butt, and pushed them off.
His dick.
My heart dropped to below my waist. I wanted that beautiful thing. Maybe I did have a dick-shaped hole because it went on fire at the sight of it. I straddled him as soon as the shorts were off.
It was the lude. I couldn’t even think. He pushed me down, the length of him on the length of my seam, rubbing where I was wet. I slid up and down, a tease of the act itself.
“Ludes make you come so many times,” he said. “So do it. Come now.”
The words. I didn’t know what words could do. The permission cast a shadow with the light of inhibition. I ran myself against him, clit to cock, and came again, fingers digging into his shoulders. I took a breath to wonder if I was doing it right. I looked to him for cues and knew I must be all right because he was biting his lower lip, pushing against me.
Sex was so good, and I was still a virgin.
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“You’re so hot. So hot.” He took his dick by the base and shifted it to me.
I positioned myself over him then
this is it, Margaret
pushed down. His face knotted with concern when
now or later but now is better
we hit resistance but
“Wait,” he said.
I pushed down hard, and something ripped. Something hurt. I froze for a second with him buried inside me, surprised at the stretching pain at my opening and the snug fit inside.
“You didn’t tell me.” He breathed it, gritting his teeth not in anger but a need to keep his head on straight against the knowledge that his head wasn’t his own.
I needed him. I couldn’t pretend I was experienced or even competent. I’d seen what I’d seen and knew what I knew, but it wasn’t enough. The Quaalude made me eager and optimistic, flooded with the feeling that nothing could go wrong.
“Show me what to do now,” I said.
He took me by the back of the neck and pulled me over him until I was an inch from his 33rpm eyes and I could taste the whiskey on his breath.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’ll already remember you forever. You gonna make it count or what?”
He stroked my cheek with his thumb. His words were hard, but his tone was a caress. “Are you sure you don’t have a set of balls somewhere?”
“You should be the last one to ask that.”
“You’re really special, Margie. You don’t need me. You don’t need anyone. That’s what I was afraid of all this time, that I’d end up inside you and I’d never see you again.”
How many minutes had passed since Hawk made me swallow? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? The room had gone from deeply angled sun to a wash of blue, yet time was nothing.
I didn’t understand any of what I was feeling. The unmotivated elation caused by the drug I’d been force-fed was a bucking stallion behind a wood fence. With every kick, the lock bent. Soon the fence was going to crash down in a splintered heap and I was going to promise him an eternity together for another and another and another orgasm.
“Do I move like this?” I shifted my hips in a circle and drove down until I felt a pressured pain deep inside and my clit rubbed against him.
He groaned. That was good. He took my hips and shifted me up then down again.
“Like that,” he said, hands running up my waist to my tits. He pinched them, and a new shot of pleasure ran down my spine.
I moved up then down until he was deep in me.
“Push against me here.” He took a hand off my tit to press the front of me against him, so my nub rubbed against his body.
I gasped.
“When you come up, angle yourself so you get it the whole way. Go.”
I did what he said, letting my clit feel the length of him. “Oh, God. That’s. Fuck.”
We moved slowly, up and down, pressing deep, the friction and pressure bringing me close to a third orgasm.
“If I make you come on your first time—”
“Gold star. Fuck. God. Gold star it’s so good.”
“You have to come soon. Please come soon I’m so-close-no-I’m-there.” His eyes closed, and his jaw got tight.
I thought the drug had made me feel good already. I thought it had aroused me more than normal, but I wasn’t even halfway there. The bucking stallion of emotion broke through the gate, and I was blindsided by a rush of joy. I cried out from the chest-bursting, brain-exploding emotional high. My world washed bright yellow, and as I dropped down on his dick, deep and hard, my orgasm flooded orange, deep red, explosive, centered on cunt and mind, mixing at the heart of something so vivid I couldn’t see who I was past it.
I dropped on top of him, barely breathing. His chest heaved under me.
“Gold star,” I gasped. “I’ll remember you forever.”
He laughed. “You haven’t even started to remember me.”
Chapter 20
1983
Strat died about six months after the last time I saw him, and I found out about it six months after that. I was in the library, catching up on schoolwork with a newfound ambition.
The library magazine rack was in front of my Debate Team materials, and I stopped when I saw Strat’s music-strewn bare chest on it. I bit my lower lip. I’d been home a month and hadn’t called him or Indy. I didn’t want to explain about the baby or whose it was (or wasn’t). I didn’t want to revisit any of it. I was a new woman.
But he was majestic, and the photo was dark in a way that made it mysterious. I was curious.
Chapter 21
1982 – THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT OF THE QUAALUDE
The morning after I’d had a Quaalude shoved down my throat, I woke up on the couch with a headache. Indy was already in the kitchen, slogging down a glass of water.
“Where’d you go last night?” he asked.
“Good morning to you too.” The light tasted too yellow. The air hurt. The floor and sky were too loud.
“Here.” He shook three aspirin out of the bottle into my palm. The circles were too perfect and too white, the big B etched into them too capitalized.
He filled a glass of water for me. I washed the pills down and drank the entire glass.
“Thank you,” I said, handing the cup back.
He took it then took my wrist and pulled me toward him. Bone creaked on bone, but it didn’t hurt. I let myself lean on him.
“I have to tell you something.” He spoke into my ear and stroked my back. That didn’t hurt either.
“Mmm.”
“I want to take another crack at last night, but without the ludes.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Or Strat.”
I swallowed.
Jesus.
Last night.
I hadn’t forgotten as much as I’d woken up feeling like I had Dengue fever or something. But, yeah. Last night had happened.
I leaned back until I could see his eyes. “I think I just need to sleep today.”
“Are you okay to stay?”
I shook my brain. Yes. I was supposedly on a camping trip. I hated camping, but I’d had to lie.
Right? I had to wrap my life in lies.
“Indy, I have to tell you something. After I tell it to you, you’re never g
oing to want to see me again.”
He did something that took my breath away. He leaned over and swept my feet from under me, getting his arm under my knees. “Never tell me. Never say it.”
His lips tightened a little, and without saying a word, I was sure he knew.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I help up my hand. “Open pledge.”
He laughed, and though it was loud, it didn’t hurt my head. “My hands are occupied. Assume it’s up.”
“Swear you don’t want to know. Swear you’re already okay with whatever I was going to say.”
“I do. Close pledge.”
I slung my arm around his neck, rested my head on his shoulder, and let him carry me to his room.
I had a life in the weeks that followed, but not much outside Indy. I helped with the studio, hammering and painting, getting boxes and running cables. I could have done that forever, lost the world and gained my soul.
But there wasn’t a soul to be had.
Chapter 22
1994
“Evidentiary privileges,” Drew said, sliding a box up high.
I gave him the next one. It was after dark, but we were almost done. I’d spent the entire process watching the veins on his forearms, the way his biceps strained his shirt, the movement of his lips when he spoke.
“I just did that one,” I complained.
“You don’t get to stop until you can bill two-fifty an hour. Evidentiary privileges.”
I picked up another box and brought it to him. They weren’t heavy. “Attorney-client. Doctor-patient. Spousal. Priest-penitent.”
He pushed the box to the topmost position in the pile, and I gave him the last one.
“Done.” I slapped my hands together.
“Contracts, quick—”
“You can’t go from evidence to contracts like—”
“Construction. Give me rescission remedies.”
I put my hands on my hips. He was making it hard, and I loved it. “Builder in breach. No remedy. Owner in breach. Builder gets market value of work done.”