by KT Morrison
He said, “You’re such a brat.”
“You love it when I’m playful.”
They stared each other down, her leg poised like a scorpion’s tail and him ready to scramble over top of her and subdue her.
“I really do.”
Her hand covered her mouth, and she said, “Ow, I hurt my lips.”
“Serves you right.”
“My teeth are throbbing.”
“How you going to explain this to your dentist?”
“My boyfriend’s cock was a lot harder than I expected.”
“You ought to know it by now.”
“I should,” she said. Then, “Stay down there,” and she indicated to the footboard with her pointed toes.
“I should probably put this beautiful dick away ... you can’t keep your mouth off it ...”
“That’s up to you,” she laughed.
Cole pivoted and got off the bed, slipped his shorts on, handled his arousal through the cotton, let her watch him, groaned. She put her foot down and enjoyed watching him dress. When he had his sweatshirt on he threw himself at the opposite end, making the bed bounce, crossing one leg over the other. She pet his foot.
He watched her silently for a while and she crossed her hands in her lap and began to feel awkward. “What?” she laughed finally and ran her hair back on both sides, tucking it behind her ears.
“You’re perfect,” he said. In his hand, pulled from his sweatshirt pouch was his iPhone, he flipped it so he could read it and she waited. He snapped a picture of her.
“Hey, don’t,” she said, putting her hands up to block her face from him. “Why did you do that?”
He was looking at his phone now, said, “I can’t draw, but I want to remember how you look right now.”
She let her hands droop, watched as he regarded the picture, his thumb still moving. “What are you doing now?”
“Sending it to Max,” he said.
“Cole ...? What the hell?” she said, scrambling over to his side. “You did not ... Let me see.”
He hid his phone from her and put an arm up to block her. She punched his shoulder and slapped his chest playfully. “You better not have.”
He smiled. “Oh, I did.”
“Cole, I’m serious.”
“Uh-oh.”
She scrunched her face up and scrutinized him, narrowing her eyes to slits. There was no way he did.
Now he showed her the phone, and she peeked closer. “Oh, my God. You really sent it.”
“I told you ...”
On the screen she saw a miniaturized version of the picture he’d taken. Her sitting against the pillows in a sweatshirt and short sweatpants, her calves and feet bare. She held her hair back from her face and looked confused. Underneath Cole had written:
Cole: just helping this smart girl study for her LSAT
That wasn’t that bad. But it punched her with guilt. It didn’t divulge the dirty intimate act they’d just partaken. Drawing him had been astoundingly intimate and while it didn’t show in the picture, she read it in the eyes of the girl in the photo, and maybe Max could too.
“Give me,” she said and held a hand out for his phone. He handed it over.
She typed:
Cole: It’s me, baby. I was posing for you
She sent it, grimaced at how contrite her message was, but it made her feel marginally better. She tossed his phone to the bed and lay back on her pillow. “Why would you send that?”
Cole shrugged his shoulders and watched his hands laying on his stomach. “I’m feeling Max out.”
“For what?”
Now he looked at her. “You know.”
She said, “Don’t. It’s me. I’m saying I want to cool it while he’s gone.”
“We do it all the time. What does it mean if we do it now?”
“What does it mean if I say I won’t and then I do? Don’t I have any resolve? ... Any respect for my relationship with Max? ...”
“Do you?”
“I do.”
“We’re open.”
“I know.”
“How can you have an open relationship with someone you’re going to marry?”
“It’s with you.”
“I’m special?”
“Yeah, you are,” she said, cocking her head and smiling.
He took her ankle and his thumb ran along the arch of her foot, running an excited line up the back of her neck. “So, let’s just do it.”
“No, Cole. I said I wouldn’t. I feel funny. He’s with his mom and dad.”
There was a Starbucks at the end of the hall on the floor that they were on, but when they arrived, the lineup was too long.
Ken said, “Follow me, I know where we can get a coffee.” They turned around and headed back the way they came. Ahead of them was Brian, who’d been following along about thirty paces behind while Ken and Max walked awkwardly, not speaking. Brian stood with his hands in his pockets as they got closer, Ken shrugged and nodded to him and Brian waited for them to pass. Ken and Max resumed, heading to the other end of the concourse and Brian followed at a safe distance behind.
“It’s just down here,” Ken said as they walked down the moving steps of an escalator heading to the floor below.
Two floors down they ended up at the subway level, still in the convention center. Ken led him into what looked like a diner or some sort of variety store. It had the trimmings of a gas station 7-11. Ductwork ran above through steel girders, and the floors were chipped beige tile. Still not talking, they passed between rows of Doritos and potato chips neatly stacked in wire racks, made their way to a line of two people in the middle of the left-hand side of the store at a narrow counter. A menu board spelled out in black plastic letters all their deli items.
Max grabbed a Clif Bar while they waited. They ordered three coffees and Max paid. Heading back out he handed the third coffee to Brian who lingered in the doorway to the convention center. Ken waved for Max to follow him again and they wove through passing people and settled under the triangular slope of an overhead escalator. It was quiet here, and they were alone, the people passed by a few arm’s length away in the concourse. Brian sat and drank his coffee on a bench outside the diner.
Ken sipped his coffee, said, “So you are really out here in San Diego for school?”
Max said, “Yeah, I had to come out here for a school thing,” wanting to move quickly into the conversation he came for but feeling anxious now. Ken was less receptive than he had feared.
Ken sipped again, said, “How’s Maggie?”
“She’s doing great,” Max said. He played with the plastic tab on the lid of his coffee. “You want to sit down?”
There were no chairs, so they both sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor, Max underneath the drooping fronds of a potted palm. Max said, “You know she wants to get into law school now?”
Ken said, “Yeah, I know.”
“She talked to you?”
“No, Martin told me.”
Max nodded, took a swig of decent coffee. “Yeah, I was surprised, too.”
“I wasn’t so surprised,” Ken said.
“You weren’t?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I was surprised,” Max said. “How’s school?”
“Me? It’s great, Max. I’m studying what I’ve always wanted.” He held his coffee away and made an elaborate gesture to check the clock face on his iPhone. Max watched him, flipping his own phone over and over in his free hand. Ken said, “You know, Max. I really do have to get going. You want to meet tomorrow?”
Max said, “No, I don’t want to take up your time. It’s just ... Okay ...” He set his coffee down on the floor, preparing a strategy in his head. His phone buzzed in his grip. It was a perfect distraction, and he turned it to face him. On the screen he saw a picture of Maggie. She was sitting on her bed which he knew very well—it was where he left her this morning. The light was stormy and gray, somewhere over her shoulder on the right-hand s
ide. She was beautiful, holding her hair back from her face, a tense look of disquiet frozen on her beautiful features. She wore a baggy sweatshirt, shorts, her legs were bare. The text was from Cole. His stomach bounced as if he had been struck. Below the picture, it read:
Cole: just helping this smart girl study for her LSAT
He sighed and inhaled while Ken watched him furtively.
“Something up?” he said.
Under Cole’s text there was another message. Though it said it was from Cole, he was sure it was from Maggie; it read: It’s me, baby. I was posing for you. Maggie taking the phone away from Cole to soothe her fiancé’s feelings. His posture slumped.
To Ken he said, “Just the reason I came all this way.”
4
Convention
Saturday, October 21st
After a long statement regarding a fictional government’s stance on product labeling, Cole said, “So young Margaret, after considering the government’s preceding statement, which of the following is most strongly suggested ... a) a warning that applies to a small population is inappropriate, b) very few p—”
Maggie said, “You and Max never ... what we did ... you guys never did that with ... some girl ...”
He set the LSAT guide down on his lap. “What? Me and Max—double-team a girl?”
“Double team?” she said, her brows tilting up high and forlorn.
“Oh, no way, Maggie. Max isn’t like that. You know Max. I’ve never done that before.”
“You haven’t?”
“Not two dudes. I’ve been with two girls.”
“Really?”
He nodded like it wasn’t a big deal. “Bunch of times.”
She crossed her legs with petulance and clasped her hands on her tummy, looked away from him and up at the wall. “Gross. I hate to think of you with them.”
“It wasn’t love, Maggie. It was just bodies.”
“I hate to think of your thing,” she said, putting a foot out and tapping near his crotch, “going in their things.”
“Don’t think about it. I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“Maggie, I couldn’t even tell you their names.”
“I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Yeah, I do,” she agreed.
He let her stew on that a while, and she wouldn’t look at him, her gaze instead traveling around her room. Cole had been with a lot of girls. There were probably a lot of things he’d done that she didn’t want to know about. Her own sexual experimentation had come late, and strangely, Cole had been a very big part of it. She’d been with multiple partners, she’d gone crazy with her Max and let him watch her with another man. There were other things still she wouldn’t mind trying. But somehow she was stuck on this set of men. Her good friends. Her fiancé and the Best Man. Two guys in her life that she trusted and loved and cared fully for. The idea of experimentation, while still glimmering, seemed to wane and grow distant. But the wedding date was getting closer with each heartbeat.
She looked at him now, and he was waiting for her, smiling and listening. She said, “Do you think you could both go in at the same time?”
“With you? We did that.”
“No ...”
“Yes, we did, Maggie. Or wait,” he paused, cocking his head and looking up like he was trying to recollect. To himself he muttered, “Maybe Max and I did that with a different girl.”
She opened her mouth wide and frowned in mock astonished horror. “Fuck off,” she enunciated slowly, then sat up and punched his thigh.
“Ha ha, no, I remember. It was you. It was you in your music room.”
“You’re damn right that was me in my music room,” she said getting up on all fours and crawling near him, looking in his eyes, hers narrowed slyly.
“How could I forget?” he whispered.
“Right. I mean both in the same time, same ...”
“We did ...”
“No, the same ...” She put her hand between her thighs.
“What?” he laughed. “Hole? At the same time?”
“Yeah. No?”
He stared at her, his eyes darting over hers, a trembling open-mouthed smile on his face, a creak in his throat as he tried to find the right words.
She repeated, “What? No?”
He laughed out loud, leaned close and put his lips on hers. Her arms went around him, wrapped his neck and she kissed him with an open mouth, her tongue going over his. When he withdrew he said, “God, Maggie, I’m so glad to have you in my life.”
“What, cause I want two at once? ...”
“It’s the way you want it. You’re the sweetest thing.”
His lips took hers again, presumptively, and she pushed him away.
He said, “Let me kiss you one more time. I swear I’ll stop at one.”
“That would be two. We can stop at two?”
“I know we can. Kiss me.”
“One kiss, Cole.”
Putting a limit on it was exciting. Their whole relationship was based on limits and exceeding them. It was in the excess that she found the ecstasy.
So when their lips came together she focused on the hesitation, focused on the tightness around her neck like she was a dog pulling on its lead. Their kiss was sweet and completely PG, soft pressing, breathing against one another.
They kept it at one more kiss. Long and protracted and sweet. Literally sweet. When she pulled back, eyes on his, she softly said, “You taste like maple syrup.”
He bit that sexy, plump lower lip and eyed her. He gave her a smile, said, “Me and Maxy had pancakes.”
“You did? Now I wish I got out of bed to go.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Tired,” she said, stretching one arm up over her head. She scooted to the head of the bed and lay her back against the pillows. “Late nights. I just doubled my load taking on these LSATs.”
“You brought that on yourself.”
“I know I did.”
“You just need me so bad you gotta follow me all the way to Harvard like a little puppy dog.”
She laughed, but it was constricted. She said, “There’s other schools I could go to. I’m not applying only to Harvard.”
His eyes met hers and slowly his smile faded seeing she wasn’t joking. “Don’t,” he said, his brow lowered.
She smiled warmly, said, “Who’s the puppy dog now?”
Max took a deep breath, said, “Well, let’s start at the very worst point.”
Ken said, “Okay,” and he put his coffee down on the floor as well.
Max said, “God, this is so hard,” and he rolled his head around on his neck. Ken’s eyes darted to the time on his phone again. Max said, “Okay, okay, I can guess you know why I’m here, and probably understand why this is so hard. So I’m going to jump right in: you saw us in the music room.”
As Max had started the sentence, Ken’s eyes drifted downward, not at his phone this time, down at the design on the carpet. This was not something he wanted to talk about. Neither did Max, but he was going to marry this man’s sister.
Ken said, “You know I did.”
“I know you did.”
Ken still wouldn’t look up. He said, “I saw you. I saw my sister. And Cole.”
Max said, “I’m sorry you had to see that. Don’t say anything, I don’t want to make this hard for you. I just want it to be addressed.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I really do have to, Ken. You can see that I have to.”
Ken shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly.
Max said, “I really am sorry that you saw that. I guess ... I guess you should know ... I want you to know that Maggie is okay. You know, I care about her.”
“Of course ...”
“Right, of course I care about her. I just don’t want you to think ... I don’t want you to think that I made her do something she didn’t want to do.”
&nbs
p; “I tried not to think about it at all.”
“Right, that makes sense. But still, it weighs on me, that you might think that I’m bad for Maggie.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well, okay, I just ... I just think that you should know, it wasn’t even my idea.”
“You came all this way to tell me what I saw was my sister’s fault?”
“No, I came all this way tell you that she’s happy. I might not be happy, but she’s very happy.”
“You’re not happy?”
“With what you saw? No. I don’t know how much I can tell you, or should tell you, but Maggie ... wants more experience ...”
“Don’t tell me ...”
“No, but I want you to know that I want what’s best for her and now I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing.”
Ken shook his head, and looked up at the sloping ceiling above them, half-smiling lips probably trying to form the phrase: Stop talking.
But he wouldn’t stop talking, he came here for a reason.
“I think Maggie needs help,” he said with finality as if this was the point he was coming to.
“Help with what?”
“I gave her freedom, and she’s taking more than I bargained for. I think Cole is taking advantage.”
“How?”
“Look, we don’t have much time, I know, so let me say: I came for your help.”
“What do you think I can do?”
“You can give me the security footage.”
Ken said, “What security footage?”
While Maggie struggled to reach her phone, Cole tugged on her ankles and kept her from getting to it. She kicked her legs lightly, putting up the appearance of struggle, and swam on the surface of her bed, one arm extending to the nightstand where her phone vibrated underneath her flea-market lamp.
“Cole!” she laughed.
“We were talking,” he said, yanking her further away.
She laughed and struggled to pull her sweatshirt down from where it rode up at her waist.
Cole said, “We have things to discuss, Margaret.”