I’m out of my league. My body is a doubtful friend, unsure of the big fun plan I’ve been talking up all week. Every movement feels dumb and clumsy, like I’m controlled by an amateur puppet master. Without thinking, I reach for my wine and take way too big a sip. It goes down the wrong way and I cough, spluttering, my cheeks now burning, my eyes watering. I wave their concern off—I’m fine, I’m fine, but I’m not. I feel vaguely sick, and I know it’s because my body is begging to fake sudden intestinal illness and get the hell out of this Truman Show porno I’ve ended up in. But I make it do something harder. I make my body stay, swearing to it that this is in its best interest. Finally, regaining my voice, I say, “Let’s just stick with the old faithful: clitty clitty bang bang. It usually takes me a while,” I add. “With a new person. It’s probably a safer bet.”
“Sure,” Cam says. “Okay, our rules: we don’t maintain contact after tonight except to set up another date. So we don’t text; we don’t interact on social media. Did you want some more wine? Or something different to drink?”
“I’m fine.” I like how taken care of I feel. They’re so attentive.
Camila checks her phone and laughs. “Me. They think we should start.” Her lips curl into a clear and present invitation. Cam scoots over, making room for me between them.
The fans have spoken. They want this. And so do I.
I position myself next to Camila. Closer than a friend would sit. She reaches up and runs her fingers through my hair. Her liquid brown eyes are focused entirely on me. Her eyeliner is flawless. She says, “You’re really pretty.”
I tingle all over. “So are you.”
She shifts closer. It’s going to happen. Her lips part. “Have you ever kissed another girl before?”
“A few times.” I’m woozy from her attention. It’s pouring over me like honey.
“It’s different,” she says. Then, a giggly whisper. “I think it’s better.”
I have zero doubt about that at this moment. “Yeah?” I inch closer.
“Mm-hmm.”
This is why men are so nuts. This is what’s at stake. A girl, this pretty, this sexy, pulling you into her orbit. “Show me,” I murmur, and then her mouth is on mine and we are kissing.
The times I’ve done this, I was so drunk I barely remember it. But now I’m really here. Really feeling how soft her mouth is. How well our lips fit together. I loosen into her, every muscle turning soft as caramel. Her fingers are in my hair, mine are in hers, and I know we look sexy, and I know it feels sexy. It’s like I’m looking at us and being us at the same time. But thinking about how I look takes me out of it and I want to be in this, experiencing it fully.
Focus. Be here. You’re the star of the show.
She breaks away from me, my bottom lip between her teeth until she lets go.
“Wow,” she breathes.
“Wow.” Cam’s voice is low behind me.
“Wosh.” Is my sex-dumb attempt of wow and gosh.
Camila’s phone is in her hand like a magician’s trick. “Hey guys, Camila here. So, I just made out with our ladyfriend and she is an amazing kisser. Remember, always get consent from your partners, and keep it safe. Peace.”
I’m about to suggest we send the phones off to bed to let the grown-ups have their fun, when Cam’s hands find my shoulders and begin massaging them deeply. I groan involuntarily. Warm lips on my neck, stubble brushing my jawline. He finds my mouth, and now Cam and I are kissing, hungrily, passionately. There’s something about the switch from a soft mouth to a stubbly one that undoes me completely and it. Is. On.
I’m kissing Cam, and then I’m kissing Camila, and then Cam is kissing Camila, and I’m watching them, and then Cam is kissing my neck and Camila is kissing my mouth and I’m feeling her boobs and we’re all writhing and rubbing and letting out little moans. It’s not as smooth and porny-perfect as the time I fantasized about this; at one stage I’m sitting on Camila’s hair and then Cam and I knock teeth and both say sorry in an oddly formal way. But what’s better, what I couldn’t properly imagine, is the physicality of three people hooking up. It supersizes all sensation—two mouths instead of one, four hands instead of two, twenty fingers, a million nerve endings. I’m being kissed and stroked and licked all at once. I’m feeling a girl’s chest press against me at the same time I’m feeling the hardness of Cam’s arousal. I’m not thinking about sexuality—lesbian or straight—it’s so beyond that. It’s instinctive. It’s primal.
Cam pulls off his shirt, revealing a chest that’d give Superman body dysmorphia. I almost double-take: pillows of pecs, buckets of biceps. Dude must work out five times a day. My little black dress is still clinging to my curves. And this feels not just sexy, but also comforting. Usually things move so fast with a guy that I’m out of my clothes before the front door’s closed. Which is a bodice-rippingly hot idea, but when we start doing it three seconds later, I’m never as turned on as I am now. And I am definitely turned on: turned out might be a better description. My lady flower has opened and is in full blood-rushing-to-nerve-endings bloom.
In one easy motion, Cam swings me up in his arms and I squeal (I’m not a squealer). He carries me, legs tight around his hips, hands on his hard chest, to a neatly made king-size bed with views of the sparkling city.
Bed.
Sex.
Sex happens in bed.
I’m somewhere between “rock star” and “intruder into rock star’s mansion.” Familiar anxieties, worn as river stones, jostle into my consciousness: Am I supposed to act like a porn star or an indie movie star? If I’m taking too long, should I just go ahead and fake it?
Breathe, Lace. Stay with the pussy. Stay with what feels good.
Cam drops me onto the bed. Camila is behind us, sipping red wine. Her hair is mussed and sultry. Her makeup is, disconcertingly, still perfect. I almost want more from Camila: a crack in her pristine armor, an indication she’s nervous or excited or anything other than business-as-usual. But she’s unruffled and completely at ease, as if she’s done this one hundred times before. Maybe she has.
In the reflection of the glass, I watch her slowly, expertly, unzip my dress as Cam watches. He steps out of his jeans, revealing black briefs that are the keeper of either a French baguette or an enormous penis. I’ve never been with someone that big: What if my vagine is too tight? I’m in my sexiest underwear: black silk bra, panties, garters, and sheer stockings. Camila’s in her underwear too, a cream bra and panties. Her breasts are a few cup sizes bigger than mine and her stomach softer; rounder. It’s so sexy. (Why do I hate my own belly so much?) The idea of all three of us together is ludicrously erotic.
I want this.
“You’re so hot,” Cam’s saying, his gaze switching between Camila and me. “You’re both goddesses.”
We are all on the bed together, and now I want it: I want them to touch me, to feel me, to put themselves inside me. Someone’s fingertips finally press between my legs, hard and deliberate. A shock of energy cracks through me. I gasp. “Fuck.” Which is exactly what I want to do.
Cam’s behind me. I’m half sitting, half lying between his legs, my head against his chest. His erection pushes into the small of my back. I slide against it until I hear him let out a low groan. Camila snaps off my garter and hooks her fingers around my underwear. The lace scrapes gently against my legs as she pulls them down and away. “Dios mía,” she breathes. “You have a beautiful pussy.”
Cam reaches under my bra and starts massaging my breasts. I’m not in control of the sounds I’m making: whimpers, groans.
“Can I taste it?” Camila asks, scooting between my thighs on her stomach. Her ass rises behind her like James’s giant peach.
“Fuck yes.” Cam pinches both nipples and I’m about to come right now. “Please.”
I squeeze my eyes shut in anticipation, tensing and untensing. Her warm, wet tongue touches my clit and I cry out. I’ve never been this turned on; I didn’t even realize oral could be like this.
Her tongue slides again and again against me. Each time, fast hot waves of pleasure explode down my legs, up my back. Cam squeezes both breasts very hard, which ordinarily would hurt but now just intensifies everything that I’m feeling. He’s muttering something in Spanish, humping my back. I’m clutching the sheets because I’m close, I’m so, so close. I look down and see Camila’s bobbing head—a girl, licking me—and it’s this visual, and Cam’s strong hands, and her hot mouth that pushes me over the edge. My pleasure boils over. My body twists like a wild thing; Cam has to hold me down as I start to come in a strangled series of “yes, yes, fuck, yes” that get more and more potent as my orgasm intensifies, building on itself, everything spasming, pleasure and pain pushing me to my limit of what feels good. My mouth is dry, my skin is on fire, and for a few long-short moments I am no longer a body but something else entirely: pure sensation, fire and earth, a feeling, a concept.
Wosh.
I am sex.
I am a sex god.
I am an immortal sex god who—
“Hey guys, Camila here.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Wow.” She’s kneeling on the end of the bed, wiping her mouth, addressing her phone. “I just gave an amazing amount of pleasure to someone and it got me thinking: giving is just as important as receiving. It’s seriously so rewarding.” She flips her hair and smiles. “We’re just getting started, so I’ll check back later. Peace.”
I pull myself onto my elbows, still vibrating all over. “What do you say we—”
“Hey guys, Cam here.”
I jerk around.
He’s on his back, speaking into a phone I didn’t even see him bring in. “Fellas, number one rule of any threesome: She. Comes. First. I know as a dude it’s super tempting to want to get in there straightaway and—”
I clear my throat. “Guys?”
“Get yours,” he continues. “But trust me, it’s best practices. Let us know thoughts in the comments, peace.”
They upload together. Their lips curl with satisfied smiles.
Camila crawls toward me as Cam flips around. I raise both hands. “Hold up. That was incredible but, c’mon.” I give them a look. “Enough with the videos.”
Camila starts, “You’re not in them—”
“I can handle a lot of nonsense, but it’s just way too millennial for me,” I say. “It’s me or the phones.”
They exchange a very worried glance. Cam rubs his chin. “It’s just . . . our fans expect it from us.”
“Our fans are very important,” Camila says. “They’re a part of us.”
Ho-ly shit. My jaw drops. “You’re picking the phones.”
“Sex is an authentic part of our channel,” Camila says.
“And our authenticity is really important to our community,” Cam says, before pausing. “That’d be a pretty cool tweet.”
This is why they’re so unfazed by group sex. It’s not a personal experience for them. It’s a performance, conducted by a couple as clean and well lit as the sales floor of an Apple store. What I thought was lack of sleaze and easy confidence is actually just carefully observed brand guidelines.
The sound of their simultaneous orgasm is truly magnificent, or what I hear of it, as I get dressed in the bathroom. I slip out the front door to the sound of dual updates.
The only star of the show here is Camila 4 Cam.
* * * *
The night air is sharp: a shot of espresso after too many cocktails. I swagger, ankles swinging effortlessly into a straight line. Drunk girls get out of my way.
My body is glowing and giddy. I feel so happy that I made a difficult choice—to stay, to go through with it, even when I was afraid—and it was the right choice. I hail a taxi like a New Yorker, like I’m summoning my steed.
In the back seat, I type a text.
Baby’s first threesome. Curious?
Naturally, I send it to Mr. Behzadi.
17.
* * *
After a week of winter sun, the weather turns nasty on the day I drive a shitty rental car upstate. In the fall, the trees lining the highways heading north are showy with color: an impressive parade of red, orange, and yellow (or in trendspeak, scarlet, ochre, and flaxen gold). Now, the landscape is bleached and twisted. I dress down: boyfriend jeans, innocuous black booties, boxy wool sweater. Anything too “New York” invites an eye roll that’s more devastating than outright criticism. My anxiety ratchets up with every passing mile. It’s not as if I’m scared of my sister. We just . . . set each other off.
I’ve made up my mind to tell Mara about my diagnosis. I need that to be a mature conversation that doesn’t end in her winning the award for Most Passive Aggressive in a Sibling Relationship, an award she has held for a record number of years.
We’re supposed to meet at her place but on the way up she messages me to meet at the café: her shift’s running late. Mara lives in Boreal Springs, the kind of upstate town that’s not cute enough to be a verified tourist trap but not grim enough to drop off the map entirely. When she first moved here, I had fantasies of cozy upstate life: summers spent hiking and wine tasting, winters spent making s’mores and trying to understand poetry. The truth is, people move to economically depressed small towns like Boreal Springs because they’re broke AF or they want to be left the hell alone. In my sister’s case, both were true.
It was always my dream to spread my wings for New York. Mara told me she was moving there the day before she left, when I was still in college. A naturopathy school she wanted to attend, best of its kind. She lived in a prewar apartment in Crown Heights with four other roommates. It was small. The city was loud and expensive. She didn’t even last the year before meeting Storm’s father at a dive bar and moving upstate with him two weeks later. (The relationship as a whole was about as fleeting.) By the time I moved to the city, she was already gone.
The bell above the door to the Blue Onion Café dings as I enter. Two groups of customers: day-trippers escaping the weather and locals escaping their own four walls for an hour. You can tell them apart from their shoes.
My niece is sitting in the corner, drawing with crayons. She has smudges of something dark on her face. Her thin blond hair is pulled into uneven pigtails. Her outfit is bizarre: faded Bratz dolls T-shirt, skirt over pants, a zippered hoodie that’s way too big. Jesus, Mara, how hard is it to dress your own daughter—I catch myself. No. I’m not doing that.
And there she is. I still get a weird little jolt whenever I see her, half infatuation, half fear. Her shoulder-length hair is growing out from a dark red henna she used a couple of months ago, faded now to a cheap-looking copper. She’s in loose Thai fisherman’s pants and an old T-shirt. No bra. Tattoos she regrets mark her arms and collarbone. She’d look like a typical backpacker picking up a few shifts before heading off to Machu Picchu, if it wasn’t for her face. Even though Mara doesn’t wear makeup, my sister is striking. Not exactly beautiful, although she could be if she tried. I’m not sure if it’s her personality or her physicality that casts her as bold and unapologetic, but that is what she is. Wild eyebrows she doesn’t pluck and icy-clear skin, even though she’d sooner be on reality TV than have a facial. Her pièce de résistance: frighteningly sharp gray eyes that see into your soul and find it lacking.
She acknowledges my presence with a nod, gathering a half-eaten plate of carrot cake and empty coffee cups.
I make myself smile. “Hey, Sis.” I kiss her cheek. “Good to see you.”
“I’ll be done in ten.” No hello. No how was the drive? “Do you want the rest of this?” She offers me the leftover cake.
I wrinkle my nose. “Um, no thanks.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing.”
“So try it.” She’s taunting me.
“I’m not in the mood for other people’s garbage, Mar.”
She stares at me as if I am flat-out crazy. “It’s fine. If it was mine would you eat it?”
“It’s not yours. It’s a total stranger’s.”
“What exactly do you think you can catch from leftover cake?”
“I don’t want to eat trash!”
She rolls her eyes. “You are such a princess—”
“Auntie Lacey!” Storm wraps herself around my legs. “Did you bring me a present?”
I scoop her up. “Hi, princess.” I nuzzle her neck, and she squeals.
“Ten minutes.” Mara turns toward the kitchen.
“Perfect,” I singsong, rubbing noses with my niece. “Just enough time to fix your hair. Mommy lets you get so messy, doesn’t she?”
And, we’re off.
* * * *
Mara lives fifteen minutes out of town, off an overgrown, unpaved back road that feels spooky at night. The house is a decent size for the two of them, with a scrappy backyard that dips down to a creek. Charming when it’s warm, but the house is old and the windows are small. It’s dim, even in summer, and cluttered. Everything handmade, bought on Craigslist, needs fixing, weird. By the time we get there, the sun has set. I leave my overnight bag in my car. I only end up staying half the time.
Inside, Mara complains about a coworker, her ceramic studio’s new opening hours, the cost of gas. I alternate with Vivian’s request about H&M, domestic politics, the weather. This is good: the alternative is silence, which means she’s really pissed. Low-stakes whining is our girly gossip.
I play with Storm while Mara bubble-wraps a dozen mugs and bowls, readying them to mail. She has an Etsy store selling her ceramics. She’s really good, I think, even though she says what she actually likes doesn’t sell.
My niece’s new obsession is, disturbingly, weddings. All she wants to do is dress up in a white skirt and marry an array of stuffed animals. I play along, but after witnessing the fourth set of largely nonsensical vows, I pull her into my lap. “You know you don’t have to get married, darling.” I tuck a strand back into the expert French braid I did. “You can be completely happy on your own.”
The Bucket List Page 11