by Ashe, Karina
He leans in closer. There’s something almost predatory about the movement. “Not in the way I like you to be silly.”
“You like it when I’m silly?” My lips feel oddly moist. From the water, I reason. “Wait, when am I silly?”
He turns his head and I get the impression he’s smiling. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not silly,” I tell him.
He looks over his shoulder. I wish I could see his expression. I don’t know if he agrees with me or not, but I feel like he doesn’t. I don’t know if I should be irritated or comforted. “I’m just occasionally silly,” I amend.
“It’s not bad to be silly sometimes. I like it.” His mask so close to my face. It shouldn’t be erotic. It should either be ridiculous or horrifying, but instead I’m so turned on I can barely even remember what we were talking about. Maybe that’s because I know the passion that hides behind it.
I notice his breathing isn’t quite steady as he leans away from me, back to his seat. “We’re almost to your place.”
My throat is so tight it feels like his cock is already in it. And then my throat tightens again because that was sort of a gross metaphor. And then I feel like gagging because I kind of liked it.
What kind of creature am I turning into?
The car stops. He gets out and then walks around the back of the car to my door. For a second, I’m left with the smell of leather, new car smell interior and smoke. I still can’t see the driver behind the black glass. I really hope that means he can’t hear us either…
I slink out of his coat as he opens my door.
“You can take that if you want.”
“I’m fine.” I don’t want to explain how I got such an expensive man’s coat to my friends.
He takes my hand as I step out. “You sure you won’t be too cold.”
“It’s like, twenty steps or something. I should be able to survive.”
He leans forward, as if to kiss my hairline, but then stops—probably because he remembers he’s wearing a mask. “Stay safe, solnyshko moyo.”
He waits until I open the front door and close it before getting back in his car. Then, I hear the hum of tires on the road. I lean back, shut my eyes and hold my chest.
He never signs his letters. They just end. And even now, when he leaves, I never feel like he’s really saying goodbye. Perhaps because he does watch me, always. He’s always there.
And I want him to be.
Chapter 3
I tiptoe up the stairs. Slowly, I take out my keys, making sure they don’t jingle as I fiddle with the lock. The door is a bit sticky but if I go slow it shouldn’t make too much noise. I smile as I open it. Good. Mission accomplished.
The room is dark, thank God. Dolly and Cassie probably aren’t back yet. Anna’s probably sleeping. I don’t set down my purse; I’ll wait to make any unnecessary noises until I’m in my room.
“So, did you have fun?”
I yelp as I turn, jumping.
Dolly, Cassie and Anna are sitting on the couch facing the door. Each have a steaming cup of tea in their hand, and a bowl of half-eaten chips sits between them on the table.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” Anna replies, yawning.
“I think it’s time we talk about something,” Dolly says after a long pause.
There’s another long pause. Still, it’s not long enough. But then again, I kind of wanted that pause to stretch into forever, so it would have been difficult to please me.
“So, did your ‘guy’ drop you off?” Dolly asks coyly.
“Uh…”
“You should invite him up next time,” she adds.
That would not be a good idea, considering he’d show up in a mask.
Shit.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a next time. I mean, we’re not really, you know.” I have no idea what I’m talking about. Of course, they don’t either.
Cassie frowns. “You’re not really what? Isn’t this the guy you’ve been seeing?”
Well, yeah, but… “It’s not really like that,” I say, eager to get out of this conversation.
“Is he married?” Dolly asks.
My eyes widen. I actually have no idea, but the thought appalls me so much I don’t even want to entertain it. “No! Of course not!”
Dolly sighs. “What’s wrong with him, then?”
I open my mouth. Close it.
“Why haven’t you told us anything about him?” Cassie asks.
Dolly looks at the ground. “Is it more than one guy, Laura?”
Oh no. I could see it in her dejected, worried expression. She was afraid I’d been burned once and was now sleeping around. It wasn’t like Dolly thought being a slut was evil or something. She got around quite a bit. But she enjoyed it, and did it because she enjoyed it, and knew from experience that doing it from a place of anger, or sadness, or resentment made sex something it shouldn’t ever be.
“It’s not more than one guy,” I tell her.
“Who is it then?” Dolly asks again.
The three of them are staring at me. Anna looks like she’s about to burst into tears. Damn, how did it get this bad? I can’t keep hiding this from them, no matter how much I want to. I sigh and make my way to the armchair. “You guys can’t say anything about this to anyone.”
That only makes them look more concerned. None of them say they won’t say anything, either.
“Seriously, promise or I’m not telling you a thing.”
“Why do you want us to keep it a secret?” Dolly asks.
“It’s not something bad,” I explain.
“I think we should be the judges of that,” Dolly replies.
“Dolly, come on. This is embarrassing enough as it is.” And it was about to get really embarrassing. My friends were about to see just how little self esteem I apparently had. I was afraid of commitment, sure. Everyone knew that. I hated letting people get close for obvious reasons. I’d even tried to keep them distant. But this went so far beyond that I didn’t even know how to talk about it.
“Look, we won’t say anything to anyone else as long as we think you’re…safe,” Anna pipes in. “We can all agree on that.”
Cassie nods reluctantly. Dolly crosses her arms and huffs. That’s probably the most she’s going to bend. I shut my eyes. “I’ve been seeing someone.”
“Who is it?” Dolly asks.
“Shut up, Dolly. Let her tell the story,” Cassie says.
“Don’t tell me when to—”
“Stop fighting you two!” Anna yells. “This is about Laura.”
The three of them turn their attention back to me.
“So who is it?” Dolly asks again.
I suck in a breath. Things are about to get bad. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Dolly asks. “How long have you been seeing him?”
“About three months. Since school started.” I don’t talk about the letters he’s been sending for…uh…a little longer than three months. I don’t talk about how he watches me.
“You’ve been seeing a guy for three months and you don’t know who he is,” Dolly repeats. I don’t know if it’s a question or not.
“How is that even possible?” Cassie adds.
“He hasn’t told me his name, and I don’t ask,” I say.
None of them say anything more about that. “How did you meet him?” Dolly asks.
I open my mouth. My tongue feels dry. I grip the water bottle he gave me. He’s written me letters forever? No. Way too creepy. I couldn’t say we met at the park and I invited him to the auditorium. That would make him sound like a stalker, which I guess he was, but it wasn’t like I didn’t want him to stalk me. I don’t know how that counted, if that counted, or…God, I was taking way too much time to think of something. “We met at practice one night. The night I stayed late.”
“How?”
I wet my lips. “He heard me playing and came in and…we ended up…�
�� What should I say here? We ended up fucking? That was too raunchy. But if we talked, why hadn’t I asked for his name?
My friends all looked at each other. I guess they’d come to their own conclusions. And they were probably the right conclusions.
“If you met him at the auditorium, shouldn’t you recognize him?” Anna asks.
Good question. “No, I hadn’t seen him before.”
“So he’s not a part of the school,” Anna murmurs.
“Really?” Dolly asks. “Didn’t you practice around midnight? What the hell was he doing there?”
Another good question. “I couldn’t see his face.”
“It was probably dark in there,” Anna nods.
“Yeah, but you’ve met him since then. Haven’t you seen his face then?” Cassie asks.
“No,” I let out before I think better of it. My hands slam over my mouth. Shit!
“You’ve never seen his face?” Dolly squeals.
“It’s not like that. I mean, it’s always dark and he has it covered.”
“Has it covered,” Cassie repeats. “How?”
There really isn’t a good way to say this. I’ve totally backed myself into a corner. “He wears a mask,” I admit.
Dolly shoots off the couch. “What the hell? Does he think he’s a superhero?”
“Oh no. No, no, no, no, no, no,” Cassie raises her hands. “He doesn’t wear a latex skin suit, does he?”
My heart pounds. “He doesn’t think he’s a superhero!” I mean, at least I don’t think he does. I hope he doesn’t. Oh shit, this is getting worse.
“So you’ve been fucking a guy for three months and for the entire time he’s worn a mask?” Dolly says.
“Watch your language,” Anna whispers but everyone is ignoring her. They’re all focused on me.
“I told you guys it was weird.”
“Well, you were right,” Dolly replies.
“What do you guys talk about—oh wait, you don’t talk, do you?” Cassie murmurs. When I don’t answer she puts her head in her ands. “Oh God, a mask.”
“He doesn’t think he’s a superhero,” I repeat.
“But you wouldn’t know, would you, because you don’t talk, right?” Cassie says. “He thinks he’s a superhero. You’re fucking a guy who thinks he’s he’s a superhero!”
“You two!” Anna says. “God, can’t you guys just let this be? She’s found someone she likes!”
“And he wears a mask!” Dolly and Cassie respond.
“Well, I think it’s kind of romantic,” Anna replies, smoothing her skirt.
All of us stare at her mutely for a full minute, including me.
“Why are you looking at me like that!” Anna says, pointing at me. “You’re the one who likes him!”
I sigh. “God, this is so messed up.”
“Tell me about it,” Dolly mutters.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is whether or not you’re happy,” Anna says. “Are you happy Laura?”
Am I? “I don’t know if being with him makes me happy,” I say. “That has never really been my question. Or at least it hasn’t until recently.”
“What do you mean?” Cassie asks gently.
I look out the window behind them. The city never sleeps. It’s never completely dark. But our view is probably about as close to complete darkness as you could get. The next building over is an unpopulated mass of brick and shadows.
“I don’t talk about myself much,” I say. “It took me months before I even told any of you about my mom.”
They don’t say anything. I never bring it up. They’re probably shocked and wondering what’s up and where I’m going to take this. I don’t even know myself.
“Well, since then I haven’t really wanted to get close to someone. I don’t know if it’s because I’m afraid of losing them, if I have survivor’s guilt, or if it’s something else. I just…think about it all the time, and I don’t want to. I want to forget. I want to be swept up into something that makes me forget about everything about who I am, and he does that for me. I don’t know if you can call it happiness, and I don’t care if it’s happiness or not. It’s what I needed.”
“Needed, not need?” Cassie whispers.
“Shut up, Cass,” Anna whispers back.
“I’m just making an observation—”
“No, Cassie’s right,” I say. “The closer I get to him, the more of him I want to see. He’s become more than that to me, and I don’t know what to do, because I think the darkness is what he needs, not me. Otherwise he wouldn’t wear a mask.”
“Why do you think the darkness is what he needs?” Anna asks softly. “He might just be doing that because he doesn’t know how to make things progress with you.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t want you to know he thinks he’s a superhero,” Cassie grumbles.
“Cass, shut it!” Anna hits her arm.
“I’m just saying—”
“Shut it!” Anna hits her again.
I grin solemnly. “I don’t think that’s it. He said once, he didn’t want to show me because he didn’t think I would love him after I saw his face.”
The girls go quiet.
“He might be a burn victim. Or deformed,” Anna says softly. “Maybe he’s been shunned by everyone and is afraid to show you.”
“He could be a criminal,” Dolly says. “Maybe he’s a wanted man.”
“Or in the witness protection program,” Cassie says.
“So he walks around with a mask? Like that isn’t going to attract attention,” Dolly says.
“What’s wrong with you?” Anna turns to Dolly. “He might be hurting inside.”
“He could also be a creep,” Dolly says. “I just don’t want her to get hurt, and the best way to keep that from happening is for her to have all the information. As it stands right now, she doesn’t even know the guy’s name. All she knows about him is that he runs around in a mask. That’s not the basis for a healthy relationship.”
“Like you’d even know,” Anna mutters.
Dolly shoots up. “What the hell did you just say to me?”
“Dolly, settle down,” Cassie says, tugging on her shirt as Anna backs up.
“No, I’m not going to settle down until you explain yourself.”
Anna looks at the floor. “I just meant that you don’t have many long-term relationships.”
“Look, I like to screw around, okay? And yes, to answer your next question, I have slept with men whose names I didn’t know, and I’ve slept with men who were probably lying to me. But I enjoy having a good time. My heart isn’t in the equation. And, no matter what happens, I respect myself.”
“I know. I don’t judge you…” Anna babbles.
“Actually it sounds like you do,” Dolly interrupts. “And do you know what? That’s fine, and Cass is right, we’ll deal with it later. But I’m trying to give my friend some good advice about men, and you’re sitting here spinning a fairy tale.”
Dolly turns to me. “He’s hiding something from you. If you were more like me, if you’d been burned before—hell, maybe if you’d had a serious relationship before—this might not be as big of an issue. But this is obviously someone you have something going with, and regardless of what you want, you’re getting into it deeper. You can’t keep meeting up to sleep with a guy in a mask forever. Sooner or later one of you is going to want more, and so you have to start thinking about what you’re going to do when the mask comes off.”
Everyone is silent. We all know she’s right. It doesn’t matter if the issue is something simple like vanity or something so heavy I don’t even want to think about it.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I whisper as Dolly’s face softens. “You guys are right. I’m starting to need him more and more, and this attachment is growing beyond what we have.”
“So ask him to take it off,” Dolly says.
“I have, and he won’t.”
“Then you take it off,” Dolly says.
“Then he learns how to man up and get ready,” Dolly says. “A week of something like this is hot and kinky. Three months means there’s serious problems.”
“Anna has a point though,” Cassie says. “What if he tries to hurt her if she takes it off? This guy could be unstable.”
“Look, stop everyone!” I stand up and start pacing around the chair. I don’t want to look at anyone’s face. All of this suddenly got too real. Before, it was a fantasy. An indulgence. I knew it was a little weird—alright, a whole lot weird—but I could deal with it. Sort of. I was weird too after all. But thinking about my masked lover attacking me if I took off his mask was frightening.
“We just want you to think things through,” Cassie says. “How do you meet up with him?”
He finds me, or sometimes he tells me where to meet in a letter.
“We just find each other,” I respond lamely. “And I am thinking things through. I just don’t know what to do.”
Dolly crosses her arms. “You need to take off that mask.”
“Dolly!” Anna chastises.
“Dolly’s right, but just pinning him down and yanking it off might not be the best idea. You should talk to him,” Cassie says.
“They don’t talk, they do other things. He’s a man of action. Pin him down, take charge and rip that baby off,” Dolly says.
I don’t think it’s possible to blush any harder.
“You guys are embarrassing her,” Anna notes.
Thanks Anna. Well, at least everyone knows. Didn’t think it was possible to be more pathetic but I guess there’s a way, and unsurprisingly Anna was the one to find it.
“We don’t mean to embarrass you,” Dolly says. “You just need to get to the bottom of this. Whatever secret he’s hiding, you deserve to know. You’ve been together long enough that if he respects you at all he’ll tell you.”
All of this sounds so reasonable. So right. So why do I feel stupid? Why do I feel like this could never happen?
“Be honest with yourself,” Dolly continues. “You want to know, don’t you?”