Neon Burn

by Kasia Fox

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “I don’t want to talk about them ever again.”

  “Don’t leave tonight. You can’t.”

  “Shhh.” She kissed him. Her lashes were lowered, damp with tears. “Let’s not talk. I just want this. Don’t you want this?”

  “I want you.” He kissed her and picked her up in one motion. Tessa wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed his neck. He carried her to the house as if someone were trying to take her from him. Cal kicked the back door open and walked through the kitchen. The plan was take her upstairs to his bed but they got as far as the dining room when Tessa grabbed his face and kissed him urgently. Her cool tongue slipped in his mouth and out. Her teeth fixed on his bottom lip, tugging gently. They kissed with her holding him until she whispered, “Fuck me here. Now.”

  Cal set her down. By the waist of his jeans, Tessa pulled him to her, stepping back until she bumped up against the dining room table. She undid the top button of his pants and just when he thought she was going to grab hold of his cock, her hand went to her own shirt. Moving with agonizing slowness, she undid the top button. The second. Finally, Cal pushed her hands away and fumbled with the buttons himself. He got to the last two before he jerked the shirt apart. She laughed as the buttons popped from their fastenings and skittered across the wood floor.

  “Yes,” she gasped as he worked her jeans over her hips. As each swath of her skin was laid bare Cal got harder. Shoulders. Breasts. Stomach. Hips. Thighs. Calves. Feet. In the soft light of the dining room chandelier, all of her sexy body was revealed to him. He stared openly, up and down. Tonight his gaze didn’t make her self-conscious. Something was different.

  Roughly, with urgency, she tore away his clothes until they joined hers on the floor. Her hands snaked over his arms and chest, memorizing his body by touch. Tessa got on her knees before him. She ran her tongue over his abs. Kissed lower. When her tongue touched the smooth skin of the head of his cock, her hands were on his ass. She dug her nails in as she took him deep into her mouth. Cal was rock hard. She sucked on him, her head moving back and forth as his hands gripped fistfuls of her hair. Breathing harshly, he withdrew from her mouth to focus his attention on Tessa.

  Bending over her, his lips traced her collarbone. Each of his hands cupped one of her firm breasts. He kissed down her sternum to her flat stomach where his tongue wrote calligraphy on her smooth skin. He breathed in the smell of her pussy, drunk on the scent that, yesterday, he’d been reluctant to wash off his hands. His mouth came to the very center of her. Tonight Tessa’s core was hotter and wetter than he’d ever tasted it. Cal buried his face in it; she arched her back, so her head rested against the smooth tabletop. The moan she released came from the deepest part of her. Her hips thrust her wetness into his face. Cal tasted all of her and wanted more.

  “I need you in me.” Her voice was hoarse. “I want to come with you inside me.”

  Cal cupped Tessa under the ass and lifted her onto the table. On the glossy wood, her hair fanned around her like a mermaid’s. He spread her legs and inserted two fingers. It felt like he could come just from watching her writhe on the table.

  “Stop,” she said. “Give me all of you. I need it.” With both hands, she grabbed his hot cock and brought it to her lips. She rubbed the head of it against her clit and shuddered. She slipped the hard tip of it in and her hips made little circles over it as she exhaled breathy little whimpers.

  “I’m going to go deep in you,” Cal said. “Can you take it?”

  Tessa bit her lip, looked up at him through lowered lashes and nodded. Cal drove the full length of his cock deep into her in one movement. Then they fucked together, their bodies so in synch it was hard to tell if both of them were moving or one of them or neither. It was fucking like this was their last day on earth. Her back arched, her stiff nipples thrust skyward and her cries grew louder. She gripped his ass, nails digging in as if she wanted to force him as deep as she possibly could. Then she closed her eyes. Her body shuddered. Cal watched her come, her cries of pleasure let loose in the house. Her orgasm set him over the edge and he exploded into her.

  Afterwards they lay on the floor together, two burst balloons after a wild party.

  “It’s going to be hard for us to eat Thanksgiving dinner with my mom at that table,” he laughed. Usually Tessa was the one too quick with the humor to cut the tension. Tonight she was quiet. She pressed her body to his and kissed his bicep. He shifted so her head rested on his chest. He could feel her heart hammering against his ribcage. “That was…” Cal couldn’t think of the right words. “…really, really good,” he finished.

  “I feel like I’m going to leave here tonight with half of me still on this floor.”

  “Hey,” Cal squeezed her to him. “You’re not going anywhere, remember?”

  No sooner than he’d finished the sentence, someone started banging on his door. Both of them jumped. Then, a woman’s voice, muffled through the glass:

  “Callum, you did not call me back and we’ve got a serious situation on our hands. Callum? Callum!”

  Shit. It was Sasha. The timing could not have been worse, especially after what had happened last night. “That’s work,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t ask questions. “There’s some emergency.”

  “Go ahead,” Tessa whispered.

  Cal sat up. “I don’t even care. I don’t even want to know.”

  “You’re still under the influence of sex.” She picked up his t-shirt from the floor and flung it at him. “You’ll care later.”

  More pounding on the door. Cal got into his pants and yanked the shirt over his head. Tessa fixed his hair for him and kissed him perfectly on his lips. More pounding.

  “I know you’re in there!” called Sasha.

  “Stop staring and go,” Tessa laughed. “She’s going to break down your door.”

  “I could sit here all night looking at you. That’s all.”

  “From the guy who says he’s not good with words, you know all you need.” She bit her lip and punched him on the shoulder. “Get out of here.”

  He went to the door and stepped out into the courtyard, just in case Sasha tried to barge in while Tessa was dressing. Irritation crossed her face as she watched Cal close the door behind him. She told him the source of her panic: A welterweight fighter for Saturday’s card in New York had been arrested for domestic violence. His wife, apparently, had bailed him out and didn’t want to press charges.

  “He’s saying he didn’t do it. Women’s groups are calling for a boycott of American Prizefighter if we go ahead with the fight.” Sasha paced Cal’s courtyard. Normally this was the sort of news that would send him into a tailspin; tonight it barely registered.

  “I mean, all of American Prizefighter or just Saturday’s fight?”

  “Either way, we need you in New York. We can strategize on the way. I’m thinking, not a press conference. Definitely a crafted statement. I have a plane waiting…” She kept talking. Cal wondered if he could convince Tessa to come with him. She said she’d always wanted to go to New York. They could surprise his parents in Queens. His mom would lose her mind. She was going to be nuts about Tessa.

  “Fine,” Cal said. “Give me an hour.”

  Sasha hustled off to her car which she’d left running in the driveway with the driver’s side door open. Cal went back in the house and found the dining room was empty.

  “Tessa?” he called.

  For all of two seconds, he lied to himself. She’d gone to the bathroom down the hall. To the kitchen for a drink of water. Then he saw the note in the middle of the table, the spot where their bodies had twined around each other minutes earlier. It was lined paper torn from a notebook and folded in half. His name in her writing. It was a letter so carefully composed, she must’ve written it before coming to the house.

  He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?

  He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.

  I shook his ha
nd, and tore my heart in sunder,

  And went with half my life about my ways.

  - A.E. Housman

  If you’re wondering why I’m gone, that’s why. I know that you think you don’t like poems, but I think that most of the time poets say it better than I can. You are so good, Cal. Even though right now it feels like I’m going to walk around only half existing, I know that someday I’ll see you on TV or on a billboard or in a newspaper and I’ll know that you’re doing something bigger and better than you can even imagine now. I’m going to be so proud to say that I knew you once. Whatever I do, I hope you’re proud of me too.

  Take care of yourself. Xx, Tessa

  The paper drifted from his hand to the floor. Cal ran out the kitchen door to the patio and stopped. She’d made her choice clear to him. He was through with chasing Tessa. Below him, across the golf course, he thought he saw the figure of a woman running. Her shape shrank in the distance until he wasn’t sure if she’d been there at all.

  ✽✽✽

  On Monday nights we went out to eat as a family. The steak dinners stopped once I got pregnant. Since then, the only place we ever ate together was a Chinese buffet by our house. Egg drop soup. Fried rice. Sweet and sour pork. That particular Monday, the Monday of the accident, I told my husband that I didn’t feel up to going out. He said I had to. I’d been cooped up too long with the baby, not going anywhere. Motherhood made me gloomy, he said.

  We pulled into the parking lot. A neon sign flashed. ALL YOU CAN EAT. A lit-up bowl of noodles and chopsticks. In the pulse of its light I saw him waiting in the shadows. My cashier.

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” I said.

  My husband followed my gaze to the man. “Who is he?” he asked. “You know that guy?”

  “He’s been following me,” I said quickly.

  It was the wrong thing to say. My husband got out. The car door dinged.

  “Hey, you,” he yelled.

  “Don’t the three of you make a happy family.” The boy cashier didn’t say it in a nice way.

  Ding. Ding, Ding. Ding.

  “My wife says you’ve been following her around.”

  I didn’t hear the reply. From the passenger window I watched the punch land. My husband punched and punched. He was a head taller than the boy cashier. When he fell, my husband kicked him. Each flash of neon light was a snapshot of violence. My cashier writhing. My husband grabbing him by the hair and dragging him across the asphalt. His shoe falling off. His sock. One crumpled sock, so pitiful. I dove from the car.

  “Stop,” I begged. “Stop!”

  “Get in the car,” my husband said. On the way back I rescued the sock, damp and blood-flecked and pushed it into my bra without him seeing. My husband dropped into the driver’s seat and peeled out of the parking lot. As we careened through the streets, the baby wailed and my husband said, “This is your fault. Remember that.”

  37.

  The airplane roared to the sky. The colorful lights of the strip and the golden urban sprawl of the city shrunk below the window. At last the glow of Las Vegas gave way to the inky desert. The world in which Tessa had a father who cared about her and a man who was falling for her was swallowed up forever. The city where she was born had burnt her. She’d never return.

  What a massive mistake she’d made, going to see Cal tonight. Tessa thought it would bring a sense of relief and closure. No peace came of it – only an insufferable ache and her mind’s constant journey to the lodestar of him. The more her thoughts of Cal overwhelmed her, the low-grade sniffles she’d been stifling since boarding the plane swelled to audible weeping. At one point the man sitting next to her, whose hairy, freckled arms were blurred by her tears, summoned the flight attendant and requested a seat change.

  “I think she needs some, um, privacy?” the man said.

  The flight attendant, bent over his seat with a vacant smile fixed on her face. “I’m sorry, sir, we’re fully booked. I can offer you a complimentary alcoholic beverage?”

  “Maybe she needs it more than me,” Freckled Arms replied.

  The last thing Tessa needed was more to drink. She apologized and said she’d try to be quiet.

  “Hang in there. It’s a short flight,” the flight attendant said kindly.

  Tessa closed her eyes and tried to make the world drop dead, like in that Sylvia Plath poem. Of course thinking of “The Mad Girl’s Love Song” only brought to mind Cal. Years had passed since she’d memorized that one; Tessa remembered only the first stanza.

  I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

  I lift my lids and all is born again.

  (I think I made you up inside my head.)

  Time. That’s what she needed. A week or two back in her old life and one morning she’d open her eyes and all would be born again. It would be like Cal had never existed. For the rest of the flight she managed to cry on mute.

  The plane landed. Tessa turned her phone back on. She stared at its blank gray screen waiting and hoping and fearing the messages from Cal that she was sure would be there. But no. Only a single text from Dev, saying that he was out front. She was still red-eyed and sniffling when she stepped into his car.

  “My god.” He reached into the glove box and passed her a McDonald’s napkin. “Las Vegas really chewed you up and shat you out, didn’t it?”

  “Thanks.” Tessa wiped her nose with the napkin and buckled her seatbelt. “And it’s spit you out, not shat you out.”

  “If you were spit you out, you’d look better.”

  Dev put the car in gear and they drove out of the airport. The familiar sights of her hometown were blanketed by night. Tessa wrapped her arms around herself in the chill. Four days in Las Vegas and she’d forgotten to dress warmly enough coming home. Instead of having a cold bed waiting at her apartment, she wondered what it would be like to return from a trip to someone who loved her. The big warm bulk of him waiting for her to press her body against his, to keep her warm. Tessa squeezed her eyes shut. All roads led back to him.

  “Okay, enough companionable silence. You’re killing me!” Dev finally said when several minutes had passed without Tessa speaking. “You’re seriously going to make me ask what the hell happened over there?”

  “Where do I begin?”

  “With the dude you’re obviously moping over.”

  Tessa began by saying, “Well, you know his name is Callum Quinn. Cal.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. Her storytelling skills faltered. Even as she tried to gather the correct words to say, words seemed flat and false. No matter how she told it, the story of her and Cal would sound cliché. How she felt about him sounded like the story any girl could tell about a guy she was infatuated with: He’s so hot! We liked each other so much! The sex was great! None of the poetry would remain in the telling.

  “You know what? Let’s end on the guy. It’s the only part of the story that’s somewhat happy,” she said.

  Dev pouted. “That’s the entertaining part.”

  “Trust me. The other part of the story is still gag-worthy.”

  For the rest of the drive home, Tessa told Dev about finding out that Ron wasn’t dead but a thriving strip club owner. From there, she discussed the likelihood that her father had committed murder and her mother had lied to cover up for him. During the story, Dev frequently interjected with “Stop!” and “No she didn’t!” and “Are you serious?” By the time they pulled into Dev’s parking spot outside the apartment building, she was finishing up with the story of her seduction in front of Berkley’s webcam livestream.

  They sat with the car engine idling and Dev’s expression turned from fascinated to anger. “Dude, that’s illegal. It’s like revenge porn or something. You could charge her.”

  “Who knows if she even kept it up there? Supposedly she did it to get back at Ron for cheating on her,” Tessa said. “I can’t bring myself to look for it. I’m dying of shame.”

  “What happened to a good old-fashioned baseball bat to the h
eadlights or burning his sneaker collection in the bathtub?” He sighed and put a hand on her shoulder and stared at Tessa until she met his eyes. “Girl, you did nothing wrong.”

  “Except I did do something wrong. I hooked up with my dad’s girlfriend. Morally speaking, that’s the grossest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  “You were the victim of revenge. And alcohol-fueled horniness.” Dev was distracted by something behind her out the car window. His eyes went wide.

  “There!” he cried, pointing over her shoulder. “Do you see that grey car? I swear, there is a dude in there who is doing surveillance on this apartment building. That car has been here around the clock for the last two days.”

  “The guy you saw coming out of my apartment?”

  “No.” Dev frowned. “A new weirdo.”

  Tessa looked at the grey car. A man sat in the front seat, the glow of his phone lighting up his face. From what she could see of him, he was a stranger. “Has the other guy been back?” she asked. “The one with the stutter?”

  “Not as far as I’ve seen.” They got out of the car.

  “So. I have a couple of theories.” Tessa shouldered her backpack and lowered her voice as they walked to the building. “Remember how you mentioned the guy who came out of my apartment had a stutter?”

  Dev said he did.

  “Well, the guy who first told me that my dad was dead, who claimed to be this old friend of my dad’s, he had a stutter. And he looked basically how you described. Probably what happened is that he knew I was going to be out of town and he took the opportunity to break in and steal something, except he discovered I didn’t have anything worth stealing.”

  “You think?”

  They climbed the stairs to the upper level where both their apartments were situated.

  “It’s possible.” She paused. “My second and more melodramatic theory? After talking with the detective this afternoon, part of me wonders if there was something Ron was looking for. The missing sock, a written confession – anything that ties him to Tyson Furnish’s death that my mom might’ve hidden away. Part of me thinks maybe this whole thing was part of his twisted plan to get me out of my apartment and to search for whatever it was he’s looking for.”