“I didn’t used to think of it as negative…” I said. It was true too. With Nat I never thought that. I was grateful for her. I didn’t think I was sick then, I just thought I was bored and I knew that I liked it. “With you though…” I stopped myself.
“Ben,” she said. “What he said changed how you felt about wanting those things?”
“Not just what he said.” It wasn’t simple. “Ever since I found out… What he was capable of. What he really did to you, bit-by-bit. It changed the way I felt about what I wanted from you, how I treated you. How I should...” I swallowed hard. “Before I felt strange, I knew I was strange.” I had to go back and remember. “When I asked you for sex that first time… I felt so wrong that day until you gave me what I wanted and it felt right, like you wanted it to.”
It was hard to think about all these things with her.
“Ben told me he saw me with her,” I said. “And the time he brought up. I know it probably wasn’t the only time he watched.”
I wished I could just give her a transcript of the whole thing. I wanted the bandaid ripped off. I wanted it done.
But it was starting to feel like there was no way to heal from the wounds. We were trying to mend them but time was needed. Time and unpleasant talks like these.
“But that time…”
I didn’t really want to tell her.
“It was pretty intense,” I said. I hoped that would be enough.
“Anyway… It just burns I guess. His words…” I didn’t want her to freak out but I knew she probably would. “Right before he left he said you deserve someone like me. I didn't know what he meant. I still don’t. And that scares me.”
I felt wrong even touching her right now I guess.
I didn’t deserve her. I couldn’t.
“He was right. I deserve someone who matches me and is good enough for me. I'm still fighting to believe that but at least I know it logically. We deserve each other. Just because he could see those things in us doesn't mean that they're bad. What we did, what we do in those times that you're thinking about... I want them too. I think we both need them sometimes but we love each other in a way that prevents us from really hurting or going too far. I think we just need to talk about how to do these things safely so that neither of us is uncomfortable.”
I thought about how she wanted my hand on her neck…
That time she wanted me to bite her…
Why did I have to remind myself that we were the same?
Why did I always have to dig to do that?
“I wish I had a guidebook,” I laughed bitterly. “I don’t know what I like, what I want, until I feel it. Some days I can’t even let you look at me. Other days I need you slow and I need it to last as long as possible. And then there’s days like today where I just needed what you did. My body changes,” I said. “Sometimes it’s easy to hurt me… Sometimes it’s hard… Sometimes I like being hurt… Sometimes I don’t…”
I was such a contradiction all the time.
“I feel like I should be less complicated than this.”
We wouldn’t have to have all these talks if I was less complicated.
In the beginning I just wanted her to use me.
Now that I was hers it felt strange like her giving me my own say ruined everything with us.
“Is it wrong I still want you to use me?”
We got to a point I got scared. That’s what happened.
And then we got to this point where I felt I needed more but I couldn’t ask for it. What I got was too much too. What I got was too much to take from her.
I couldn’t find the middle ground and I couldn’t explain.
“No, it's not wrong. We’re both complicated. Is it wrong that I like that?” She wondered. “I like that I have to try things and see what you're feeling. I love when it's crazy and passionate and I love when it's quiet and soft. I love all the times. I love using you for what I want and I love it when you do that to me. I want it all. It's hard to talk about this stuff but when we do it'll get easier. I wish there was a book sometimes too but then I don't. I like learning by trial and error. Hands on. I just want you to be okay with doing whatever you want to me or whatever I want. I'll tell you if I’m about to get lost.”
Her words just pushed everything inside me down and reminded me of what we were and why we were.
I reached up and pulled her in, kissing her and needing her all over again, a smile coming to me as I drew her close. All my gates were open now, nothing locked away, everything inviting.
“I love you so much,” I whispered, once I got the strength to let go of her lips and pull myself away. Her way of loving me was so right and true. I needed to stop thinking about everything else. She was right. He got to me. It was dumb.
Ben was Ben and that was it.
I thought of her comment from before: Baby, he’s not that smart.
And that’s the only thing I needed to hear.
I didn’t see him like she did. I didn’t see him sitting in some cell and jacking off about us and thinking of us ruined.
I knew to her he was a villain. And with her in mind I would always know he was exactly that in the broader textbook sense.
But I had a different vision of him and that vision required me to work through all this and rule out what she saw because he was human too.
I didn’t need those extra thoughts now. The thoughts of him wanting to control us and this thing that was us and not him.
He’d dehumanized her while observing my humanness and distancing himself. The contrast between the two situations is bizarre. Connected; yes. But not elaborately so. And that’s what’s important.
For now I could be done with him. I could calmly shut that door and leave that room alone.
And maybe for me it was part-ways delusion but as long as it worked I could stop thinking about it now and shut him away.
He was her walking nightmare and he tortured her mercilessly.
I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t even come close to that if I somehow decided to become a monster and that was all I needed to know. I could never become him.
I was Avery’s and she owned me.
We were the opposite.
We would be fine.
I felt her body moving into mine, every part of her so real I could scream.
“I hated keeping things from you,” I said softly, knowing it deep down. It’d only been a few hours of secret thoughts but for some reason that killed me inside and ruined me for her. I kissed her now, relieved of that heavy weight. Every touch felt so much better. I got a fever from need once I realized again that it wasn’t wrong.
Chapter Nineteen
Avery
We talked for so long. Ever since I found out that she had spoken to Ben it had been odd between us. Our minds diverged for a painful stretch of time until we finally came together again, arriving at the same place.
We kept being interrupted by these events and people. My mental state hadn’t been all that level since Ben and me barging into her life had changed everything. She used to spend a lot of time alone and now I was with her all the time. I wondered if we needed to spend a little time calibrating away from each other.
School would fix that. We had no classes together and only lunch at the same time. I knew that by the time school was over Monday that we would be gossiped about extensively. Not many people even knew that I wasn’t straight and I know everyone probably thought that Olivia was straight as well. People loved to idealize and nurse that random default.
“So, we’ve got two days until we have to go back. What should we do? Tell me anything you’ve ever wanted to do with me.”
“I want to do way more things than we possibly could do in a weekend,” she said. “Hey and what happened to extra credit and catching up? I wanna be your tutor, remember?”
“You would bring me back to Earth after I was imaging us doing all sorts of crazy fun stuff but yeah. I want you to teach me things. That actually does soun
d fun. Maybe I’ll learn better from you.”
My learning would probably consist of me fantasizing about her while she was trying to teach me Calculus but whatever.
“Oh, you’ll learn,” she said lifting her eyebrow. “I have ways.”
“Oh god,” I said, bugging my eyes out. “I’m both terrified and excited by this prospect.”
She was cute and kind of bossy right now. I had to press my face into her chest to keep from laughing.
“But can we do something else too?”
“Ahh, sweetie. It’s fine. If you want to have fun this weekend we definitely can. We have more than enough time to get you back on track during the week.”
“How about this, tomorrow we study. Tomorrow night we just hang out, watch movies or something. Sunday during the day we go somewhere where no one knows us and just have a fun day and then Sunday night we can just chill and maybe you can pound some Physics into my head. ‘Cause honestly that’s what it’s gonna take to get it in there.”
“Well, alright then, I guess I’ll have to pound you,” she joked.
I just sat there, a little shocked for about a second before I got this warm feeling all over that ended in me throbbing at the thought. “What’s Physics again? I think you’re going to have to do a lot of pounding before it sinks in.”
“Hey, if it helps you learn I’ll do anything,” she said truthfully.
“So, you’d have sex with me… A lot… If I learned something from it?” I quirked an eyebrow, devious smile coming out to play.
“Yup,” she sighed heavily just for effect. “I’d also withhold sex from you… A lot… If you learned something from it.”
“Oh my God, that just turned me on even more.” I laughed and took her face in my hands. “Ugh, I love you because you kill me in all the good ways.”
“Mmmhmmm,” she hummed, staring down at my lips.
“I’m not too proud to beg though so be prepared and I’m told that I’m really cute.” I coughed and snickered.
“By who?!” She played at being mad.
“People. You being one.”
“Oh, okay,” Olivia nodded her head calmly. “I thought you meant other people and I was about to get upset.”
“Ha,” I barked. “There was only one other person and she didn’t mean it in a good way.”
“Shut up,” she laughed, grabbing me close just to push me. “I told you she really liked you.”
“Yes, you did. She’s still gotta hate me some too though, which is fine. I’d probably feel the same way. Well, I’d probably not handle it as well as she did actually.”
I kept going off in these weird thought directions when it came to Natalie. I’d wanted to hate her at first too but I couldn’t. If it weren’t for the circumstances of our meeting I think we might even be friends of some sort.
“I’d bet she’d have you begging,” Olivia was thinking about that.
“Begging for what?” I scoffed.
“What do you think?!” She laughed. “It’s not like I had a lot of people I was chasing down before you, Avery. That was never because there was some lack of beautiful people out there. Nat was special.”
“Are you thinking about Natalie and me having sex right now?” I bit my lip, trying to keep my smile at bay.
“Oh,” she shook her head. “Sorry, I was thinking of alternate universes. What would happen if you met Nat while I met the Barista.”
“You would have eaten the Barista alive,” I pointed out.
“You and Nat would be something,” she mused. “What’d you see in the Barista?”
“How so? I think Natalie would get bored with me.”
The Barista… It was so long ago in my mind.
“How could Nat get bored with you? She didn’t get bored with me and I barely even did anything to her all the times we hungout.”
“You and Nat would be like fire,” she flared her eyes with intrigue.
“Okay, now you totally are picturing it.” I laughed, finding myself oddly doing the same.
“All we would do is fight. She’d get tired of me calling her a bitch.”
“Um, no. She’d get turned on by you calling her a bitch,” Olivia laughed.
“Man, yeah. We would probably just end up never talking except when we were yelling at each other and then have a lot of crazy animal sex.”
“Yeah,” she laughed. “We didn’t talk too much. It was never about talking. Why didn’t you answer me about Daisy?”
The bizarre conversations that she and I got into sometimes amazed me. Only because they seemed so normal.
“I liked Daisy because she was sweet and she seemed really laid back and cool, like too cool for me. She was older, she was in a band, and she had great tattoos. That was about it.”
“Hmmm… So you wanted someone cooler than you? That’s interesting…”
“I didn’t actively want someone cooler than me I just found that trait attractive in her. Turns out she was a bit of a stalker but not in the hot way. I told you she showed up at my house but what I didn’t say was that I wasn’t even aware that she knew where I lived.”
“You tend to attract the stalker type,” Oliva sighed.
“Yes, and for once it worked out for me.” I grinned, pinching her cheek because I knew it would make her mad.
“Ick,” she sounded, pushing my hand away.
Her face was priceless. I wanted to kiss her until we both passed out but that wasn’t conducive to conversation.
“She thought we were more than we were. I never promised her anything because that wasn’t what I wanted.” I nudged her arm. “She works at the coffee shop you went to when you ran into Skylar. Maybe you were in the same room with her and you didn’t know it.”
“Um… Yeah,” she said, thinking about it. “That’s actually my favorite cafe. If I have time I always go there… I hate thinking now that you were in there when I was on certain days and I didn’t notice because I was in my head.”
“Well, I like thinking about that. It’s sad but comforting. At least we were existing in the same place. I got to be near you even if I didn’t know it.”
I stuck my tongue out. “That was too sappy, even for me.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” she said. “I hate it. I hate all the time I wasted not being with you.”
“Fair. It was dumb that we weren’t together but I guess we had stuff to learn and do first.” She was frowning but I used my fingers to tip her lips up into a smile.
She stuck her tongue out to stop me.
“If we go in there together and she’s there I’m going to laugh.”
“You’re so mean,” she said.
“I didn’t say I’d laugh at her, just in my head at the situation. Kind of like…” I tried to do a fancy announcer’s voice. “Avery Lockhart, this is your life.”
With my luck Ben would be there too, after being acquitted. I laughed, shaking my head.
“You’re really funny, you know that?” She asked, smiling. “In some ways you’re like an old man. In other ways you’re this hyper puppy. And then there’s normal you, this cocky hotshot knockout. Where’d you even come from? Crazy girl...” She was talking to herself at the end.
“I’m pretty sure I came from down the street but I can call my dad and check.” I stopped, actually feeling a little proud that she thought of me like that. All those things that she saw in me.
“There you go again… Just that regular girl next door… Killing me quick.”
“You really think I’m a cocky hotshot?” I knew I was. When I got in certain situations and with certain people. “We never even socialized together but I guess you see more than most other people do because that’s you. The observer.”
“With your friends you’ve always been protective of me and even today Natalie called you my Little Knight. It takes someone cocky to be protective like that. Plus,” she shrugged. “You’re kind of obsessed with yourself.” I think she was teasing.
“You
’re right,” I deadpanned. “I am the coolest person you know,” I sighed. “It’s no wonder you love me.”
“But wait… I sort of know Shay Mitchell,” she teased. She liked to poke at my sore spots.
“You practically dated Shay Mitchell,” I said, my head cocking to the side. Attitude pouring out of my expression. “Natalie could be her sister… Twin actually.”
“What?!” She laughed. “I mean, I guess they look similar but not THAT similar,” she fought. “Nat’s got more of a figure. Not that Shay doesn’t. But they’re just totally different,” she shut me down, eyes sort of drunk on lust.
Paper Dolls [Book Three] Page 32