by Kade, Teagan
He slips his hand down the front of my jeans as we walk, past my panties and right into the heated juncture between my legs. I gasp, cheeks blushing. An old woman gives us the evil eye as she exits from the pharmacy on the right.
It’s too dangerous. Anyone could see me hanging around town like this. There are too many people I know, people who won’t hesitate to go to my folks and blabber away until the sun sets.
Tim removes his hand and holds it to his face.
“What are you doing?”
He runs his fingers under his nose and I pull his hand away.
“Mmmm, mmm,” he says.
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’m not the one who’s soaking wet down there.”
Tonight.
We pass by the old theatre.
Tim swings around in front of me, my body thrumming from his touch. “Want to see a movie?”
“I haven’t got any money.”
He winks. “No problem. Come with me.”
He pulls me by the hand into an alley down the side of the theatre building, around a corner to an exit door. I look around, spotting invisible witnesses everywhere.
Tim takes out his lock-picking kit from his pocket. He carries the damn thing with him everywhere, says it’s the only thing his daddy’s ever given him bar a good ass-kickin’. His initials are embossed into the smooth leather pouch.
He pulls two tiny tools free and works them into the lock of the exit door, tweezing and twixing them together until with a pop the lock clicks and he turns the knob to draw it open. “After you.”
I step into the dark hall of the exit corridor all concrete and cold confine. Tim comes up behind me, hands guiding my hips through the darkness.
This is what it’s like to be with him, to always tread that fine line of legality. Maybe that’s what’s so attractive about him in the first place. He doesn’t live by the regular rules of others. He doesn’t care for what others think. He treads his own path.
Of course, I’ve never been to his house. Even he admitted that was too risky. “He’s got a temper,” he told me of his dad. “Mom, too. Sometimes we get a hidin’ so bad I can’t see for a week. My brother and I just stay under the house, you know, wait it out.”
And he’s right. He’s met me at school with a bruised cheek before, busted eye, all kinds of injuries he put down to falling off his bike or stumbling down the stairs, but I know better. I think everyone does but says nothing of it. No one wants to get involved with his family. I haven’t met any of them, but it’s common knowledge: they’ve got a reputation.
We come out at the top of the theatre stairs. An old black-and-white is showing on the screen. Hitchcock maybe, with birds flapping about and a woman screaming hysterically down the street.
I’ve always loved this theatre, the strange art deco sculptures and worn red velvet, the way the whole place smells of mothballs and stale popcorn. It’s in the walls, the chairs… history.
There are only a few people in the cinema, the ageing Rosie crowd here for the afternoon session.
“This way,” whispers Tim, leading me up to the top dress circle overlooking the cinema proper.
An usher comes past, torch sweeping over the chairs.
Tim pulls us down into a tight ball by the wall. The light passes over our heads. My head is against his chest, his heart beating a steady staccato against my ear while my own gallops away against my top.
With the usher gone, we hurry past the No Entry sign and up the stairs to the dress circle, selecting two seats at the back while we sit down and giggle like fools, hands holding each other as we kiss and make out.
I pull away just long enough to catch his eyes lit by the screen, the absolute infinite of possibilities there, and I can picture us on his bike, with new towns and adventures, the whole world before us. We make love under the stars, hitchhike our way across the country when the bike dies. We find friends along the way, strange vagabonds like ourselves who are searching for the simple life. I’ve already written the letter to my parents. Each line is seared into my head.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
The words take me by surprise.
The woman on the screen screams as she’s attacked by a cloud of flapping wings.
“Most beautiful thing in the whole wide world.”
I squeeze his hand tighter. “Thank you.”
I lean in closer, pressing my legs together to stifle the need that’s gathered there. “Tonight, at the skate park, I’m yours, okay?”
He nods, a sudden burst of light from the screen lighting up his features, his moppy hair greasy. “Are you sure?”
I reach over and cup his crotch. He’s rock hard. “Yes, I’m sure. You got protection?”
He nods again. “Stole it from the pharmacy this morning.” He pulls a plastic square out from his pocket and I look upon it with wonder knowing this will be all that separates our bodies tonight.
“Will it fit?”
He laughs. “I hope so.”
“Hey,” he says, placing three kisses down my neck, my nipples stiffening against my top into tight twigs. “I want to try something. Will you let me?”
“Sure.”
“You won’t freak out, okay? I haven’t had much practice.”
He kneels down in front of me, into the tight space between the chair rows.
He moves between my legs and parts them with his hands.
“What are you doing?”
“You said you wouldn’t freak out, remember?”
The projection continues to run over our heads in a solid tunnel of light, but we’re too high up for anyone to see.
“Lift up your feet.”
I lift up my feet. He pops the button on my jeans. My mouth falls open.
“Trust me, okay?”
I nod, body pulled wire tight.
He takes down my zipper and begins to pull my jeans and panties away as one. I fold my legs together and lift my butt off the seat, allowing him to pull them down until they’re around my knees.
The stale theatre air brings goose bumps to my skin as his hands run over the top of my thighs.
The crotch of my panties finally pulls away from my crotch sticky and wet.
“Ready?”
I nod again, feet on the floor as he parts my legs and I yawn open before him.
I give a little gasp. My heart feels like it’s going to pound its way right out of my body as I arch against the back of the chair trying to press myself towards him.
His fingers move down my thighs, over the inner baby fat, coming closer and closer until they reach the puffy outer folds of my pussy.
My mouth forms into a circlet. I close my eyes as he moves through my folds.
We’ve touched before, but this, this is something else.
My chest heaves below, head light. He moves forward and I want to tell him no, no, that this is too much too soon, but I can’t help it. I can’t make my mouth move as his own falls against me and I melt at his touch.
The tip of his tongue moves out, a fleshly explorer, probing into the heat and desire that’s pooled fast between my legs, eager now, hungry as I place my hands on the top of his head and pull him towards me.
I moan internally when his tongue sweeps down and burrows deeper, his rough fingers holding me open. My butt squirms on the seat and I look towards the ceiling. I slink lower, trying to shut my mouth and stop myself screaming out at the top of my lungs that ‘yes, this is amazing!’.
I’m self-conscious of how I am down there, how I might smell, how wet I am, but I know he doesn’t care. His mouth moves over my mound as he laps higher in long, flat strokes against my clit, rubbing the tip of his tongue back and forth over the swollen bud until with a sudden spark of lightning I kick forward hard against his face. Fingers netted through his hair, I moan loud and long up to the ceiling as a strange wave of sensation overcomes me and I spill out against his tongue. I hold him to me, suffocating him with my pussy while I buck and
judder in the seat, flapping around like a fish out of water as my very first orgasm subsides and all I’m left with is a fragmented shift of color and light reverberating in my head.
Tim’s face comes away glistening, a grin so wide on it you could see it from the Space Station.
“Wow.” It’s all I can offer.
“Hey! You two!”
The usher’s torch swings over us and I scream in fright. I leap from the chair, trying frantically to pull my panties and jeans back on as he makes for the side stairs. I stumble, but Tim’s hand holds me firm. There’s no time to do up my zipper, even get my pants back on properly as we burst out of the side door laughing and running at full pelt down the road, people shaking their heads and cussing as we pass by in a blur, the sun switching through the trees while it ebbs away.
I am so happy, so unbelievably happy I could cry, and when he spins me into a side street to kiss me, my own tart taste on his lips, it almost happens again.
He places his hand on the brickwork beside my head, twirling a curl of my hair around his finger and watching it unwind with solemn reverence. “I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too.”
It feels right. Perfect.
Everything is perfect.
Everything is right.
“Tonight? Wou’ll be there?”
I kiss him again. “Of course.”
He turns and bounds out onto the street.
The fading sun lights him from the side, his scrawny frame and his cut-price clothes. The smile on his face is pure. I am all he sees.
He stands there waving like an idiot.
I wave back, body still tingling.
Tonight I am finally going to lose my virginity.
It’s going to be perfect.
And he’s still standing there as I think it, waving and smiling as the bus collides with his body, sweeping him from sight and life.
I know from the sound alone – the sheer, hollow thud – it’s bad.
Somehow, my legs move. I step forwards and stop when I see him.
I don’t stop screaming for hours.
Chapter Three
(PRESENT DAY)
I stand at the corner where it happened. It’s funny. It hasn’t changed at all. I stare at the spot where Tim lay in a twisted pile. The blood is gone. There are no flowers any more, no signs. It’s just road now, a curb and a stop sign.
I take a deep breath and fall back against the nearest wall.
Cars rush past. They have no idea what transpired here just five years ago, the one moment that changed my life forever, that swept me up and cast me out of Rosie.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t walk past here every day knowing this is where my life had unraveled, where the best thing in it had been taken from me with such violence and speed.
“Hey!”
I turn and find a familiar face stomping towards me.
“Lisa?”
She looks exactly the same except for the uptown strapless she’s wearing. She’d be more at home in New York than Rosie, I muse.
She comes right out on the attack. “Heard you were back.”
She stops before me, hands on her hips.
“Lisa, hi,” I extend my hand, but she leaves it hanging.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” she continues.
“Lisa, I know we had our-”
“You don’t know shit. You think it’s okay what you did to him, to that poor boy?”
Poor boy? I want to tell her she never let a moment pass to heckle Tim, to talk down on us. Her tune changed after he was dead, of course. Everyone’s did. Funny how that works.
“You should just go back to whatever city and celebrity life you crawled away from and leave us all the hell alone.”
So that’s it – jealousy.
I step forward, “Lisa, please,” but she swats my hand away. “Stay away, bitch.”
“Oi!” Dan comes bounding over, coffee in his hand. He steps between us, pushing Lisa back. “What the hell’s going on here?”
Lisa looks at me with nothing but venom. “I was just telling this little slut here she’s not welcome.”
“Look here.” Dan steps right in front of her face and she backs up, suddenly caught off guard. “You better watch your language, you hear me? She’s got as much right as anyone else to be here.”
“But she-”
“But nothing. Be on your way now.”
Lisa gives me one final look of disapproval before turning and walking away. I watch her go, shell-shocked.
Dan turns to me, head down and hand running through his hair. “Wow, sorry about that. You know, Lisa’s had it a bit rough since you left.”
I laugh. “Lisa? Had it rough? Her family was the wealthiest in town when I left.”
“She lost a kid.”
“Oh.”
“Still,” he continues, “that gives her no right. You okay?”
I nod, hoping this god-damn pavement would just open up and swallow me already. “Yeah, I’m just not used to being attacked in the street.”
“You sure you’re a New Yorker?”
We laugh and for the first time I see something in Dan, an openness I never knew was there.
He reaches out and takes my hand, thumb running over my skin. “You’re going to have to make it up to me again, you know.”
I play innocent. “Oh?”
“This time I’m really taking you out, wherever you want to go. Eight again?”
I can’t exactly turn him down. Truthfully, I don’t want to. “Jemma’s taking me to Dixie’s tonight, but I can meet you there?”
“I’m on duty ’til eight, but sure, I can do that.”
He walks away, turning once. “If any more of your old school foes show up, just give ’em a good sock in the head. You have my permission.”
I salute. “Yes, officer.”
“Eight,” he says, unable to hide the smile lighting up his face.
“Eight,” I shout back, pausing one last time to look at the road.
*
I meet my friend Jemma at the corner coffee shop. Like most things in Rosie, she hasn’t changed at all. In fact, she still has the whole quasi-alternate thing going on complete with Doc Martins and streaks of pale pink through her hair. She might actually be fashion forward in New York.
“Dan Winter?” She goes to sip her coffee and places it back down when she realizes it’s the same temperature as the surface of the sun. “He’s a stunning specimen of the man form, yes, but he’s also, I don’t know, kind of a bore.”
“A bore?”
“You know, just kind of generic.”
“Harsh.”
“Hey, you know me. I’m just being honest. We’re good friends, Dan and I, but still, I speak only truth.”
I peck at the banana bread in front of me. “How’s your love life?”
“Same-same, guys come and go, but the relationships are, how shall I put it, casual in nature.”
“So you’re a slut?” It’s great that even after five years I can still be so natural around her.
She rolls her eyes. “Takes one to know one. What about New York? I bet you were being pumped all night, amiright?”
She sees the dark look that crosses my face as I stare down into my rapidly cooling mocha. “Hey, what is it?”
“Let’s just not talk about New York, okay?”
“Cheater?”
“Something like that.”
She nods. “Tough, but hey, I’m glad you’re here now. I’m going to find you a wholesome man if it’s the last thing I do, or at least a guy with a big cock.”
“Jemma!”
An old couple sharing a slice of carrot cake at the counter shake their heads.
We laugh together as Jemma leans over the table and lowers her voice. “Seriously, we need to get you back in the saddle – a hard, sweaty saddle with abs you could wash your laundry on.”
“You are very naughty, Jemma Grey. You should write erotic rom
ance or something.”
She flits her hand through the air. “Everyone knows there’s no money in that.”
“E L James would disagree.”
“E L James can blow me.”
“You’re one of a kind.”
“Now,” she continues, getting back to business, “what are we going to do with that vacant vag of yours?”
Chapter Four
It’s peak hour at Dixie’s and the place is pumping. It’s the kind of small-town bar that’s cozy and comfortable, with weathered floorboards and an oddly appealing mix of sweat and cheap cologne filtering through the air. I can’t believe I’ve been dragged out here.
Jemma swings up to the bar. The bartender clearly knows her.
“Four cowboys, please,” she smiles.
The bartender looks at her, looks at me, deduces there are just two of us and questions, “Four?”
Jemma nods and, resigned, the bartender lines up four cowboys across the bar. Before they’ve even settled Jemma picks up two and downs them. I don’t think they even touch the sides of her throat.
I pick up a shot and question why I’m here. The band’s loud and I can barely hear Jemma over the noise. “What?”
“Down it!”
I throw the shot back and scrunch up my face. Cowboys aren’t my thing. I’m more of a vodka-and-lime kind of girl.
Jemma drags me onto the dancefloor. She starts moving my arms like I’m a puppet when I refuse to dance. Reluctantly, I try to move. The more I do, the more I enjoy it. It comes back to me, the feeling, the life of movement I’ve held at bay for so long.
A couple of guys are already eyeing us off, circling around us with poor imitations of the running man or lawnmower. Thankfully, I don’t recognize them.
I look to the stage. The band is actually pretty good.
The lead singer catches my attention. His guitar is slung low against his crotch as he bends towards the mic. He wears a tattered black shirt, body toned and built, eyes gleaming blue then green in the changing light. I notice a tat on his bicep. He’s got great tone, real passion his voice.
There’s a tap on my shoulder that breaks me out of my temporary hypnosis. “Fancy some of this, baby?”
A man with an actual roadkill-on-his-head mullet is holding the seat of his pants and thrusting towards me. I back away in revulsion.