Melt With You

by Alison Tyler

  As the lights dimmed, she began to relax. She remembered so many things about this place. She’d heard UB40’s ‘Red, Red Wine’ here, before an epic viewing of the Mad Max trilogy. She’d had her first kiss here. With Rowan. A shudder ran through her, and Van immediate wrapped one arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  She shook her head. How touching that he’d be a gentleman, even dressed like a lady. Or like a man dressed like a lady. She liked the way he looked in the lingerie, and that surprised her. She’d never really thought she was kinky before. And now look at her, fucking on a dance floor in San Francisco, being Dom to her high school crush the night before. Returning to the eighties had definitely unleashed a monster.

  ‘Ooh, it’s starting,’ Nina whispered, and Dori stared up at the screen, at a public service announcement she hadn’t thought of for twenty years. The director, Jon Waters, exhaling a silver plume of cigarette smoke and then dramatically sucking in the cloud of it through his nose, French style, as he warned the audience against smoking in the theater. There was laughter, and people threw popcorn at the screen, and Bette suddenly stumbled up the stairs, Gael in tow.

  ‘What’d I miss?’ she asked. Dori was bemused to see that Gael was dressed as Rocky in a loincloth made of shimmering gold material and nothing else.

  ‘Well, they were kissing in the lobby,’ Nina announced, and Bette chuckled as she set herself on the armrest between Van and Dori.

  ‘One of you is going to move,’ she said, ‘let’s see which one it’ll be.’

  Dori got up immediately and scooted down a seat.

  ‘Thought so,’ Bette grinned. ‘It’s an easy way to play Spot-the-Sub.’ She settled into the chair and kicked her feet up on the seat in front of her, like a bad kid. A bad kid at forty. Had she ever grown up?

  Gael had found a place on Nina’s side, and he didn’t seem concerned by Bette’s antics at all. Dori continued to take in Bette’s costume. She was Columbia through and through, with the gold-sequined hat, the fishnets, the short-shorts, the little, anklets.

  As the movie started, those giant glossy red lips filling the screen, Bette gripped Dori’s hand and started to sing along.

  The group came fully prepared, which surprised Dori. She’d thought only teenagers were so into Rocky Horror. But Nina produced from her large studded leather bag an assortment of items needed to enhance the film – uncooked rice to scatter during the opening scene, newspapers to rustle overhead as Brad and Janet rushed through the storm, water guns to help make it rain on those down below, bread to toss when the characters made a toast, cards to throw when Frank-N-Furter sang, ‘Cards for sorrow, cards for pain.’

  Dori couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this much innocent fun. Messy, maybe. But God – shooting the water gun overhead, hearing the rain patter down on the newspapers below … She lost her worries while the movie was on. Lost all of her fears until Van stood up, grabbed her hand, and pulled her toward the aisle.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘We act it out.’ And he was pulling her down the stairs toward the stage. A huge swarm of people were headed there, to prance around to the music. There were feathered boas and high-heeled shoes. A swirl of colors, and the film playing in the background. And then there was Dori, kicking her legs in chorus-line style, buffeted by the men and women in drag.

  She found herself looking down at Chelsea, whose eyes opened wide in shocked recognition. Had the girl realized who she was?

  No, Dori assured herself. Chelsea simply thought she was Emma Martin, from New York. But she clearly did not expect to see Dori’s cousin dancing on stage at The Majestic. The vision would have surprised anyone, wouldn’t it?

  Because Dori would never have expected it of herself, either. And yet she couldn’t remember the last time she felt so exhilarated. The crowd was cheering them on, and Van had his arm around her waist, holding her, laughing with her, kissing her, his lipstick smearing as he pressed his mouth firmly to hers. A shiver of erotic electricity flickered through her. She was reluctant to break the kiss.

  When the scene was done, and Tim Curry had been vanquished by Riff Raff and Magenta, the live players stumbled down the stairs to the left of the stage. But Van didn’t lead her back up the steps to the balcony. Instead, he pulled her after him through the under-lit lobby, and up the back way, to the restrooms. Dori was giddy, a bit drunk from the Long Island Iced Tea, and flushed from the excitement of the performance. Playing Brad was more intoxicating than she would have thought.

  The bathrooms were at the top of the stairs – Men’s room on the left, Ladies’ on the right. Van didn’t hesitate for a second, he dragged her after him into the Ladies’ room, pressed her up against the cold silver mirror, and started kissing her, his lipstick luscious on her mouth. She tasted the gloss, then felt his tongue on hers, and she closed her eyes. Van lifted her up, set her down on the closest white porcelain sink, and wrapped his boa around her, teasing her with the feathers. The sink was chilly beneath her, even through the material of her slacks, but that’s not what made her shiver.

  She trembled at the touch. The delicate feathers tickled her in the most delicious manner.

  ‘You like that?’

  Dori purred her response, words failing her.

  ‘Put your hands out.’

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, still reeling, but she did as he said. Until coming back to town for the reunion, she’d never been tied up before. Was that why she was so wet, or was there something extra special about the way Van was treating her? Because in an instant, Van used the fuchsia boa to capture her wrists. Dori grinned at him, feeling silly wrapped up in the boa, but sexy at the same time. The feathers caressed her skin, but when she moved her wrists, bits of marabou fluff rained down on the pink tiled floor.

  ‘You’re mine now, Brad,’ Van said, his voice husky, and Dori thought about the one particular scene in the movie where Frank-N-Furter had his way with both Brad and Janet. She wondered whether Van might be bi. He did seem aroused by the fact that she had on a man’s suit.

  ‘Take down your pants.’

  ‘How can I?’ she drawled. ‘You’ve got me all tied up.’ She shook her wrists for emphasis, and more bright pink bits of feathery fluff floated in the air around them.

  Van gazed at her, then pulled her off the sink and pressed her up against the Pepto-pink-painted wall. He fumbled around for her belt and then the zipper, slid the pants down around her ankles, and then laughed.

  ‘You even wore men’s drawers.’

  ‘I wanted to be fully in character,’ she said, turning her head so that she could smile at him in the mirror. ‘Didn’t feel right to have on my usual panties.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he said, ‘so many people are only in it for the surface. But you went all the way.’

  All the way.

  Like in high school. Of course, back then she wouldn’t go all the way. And now look at her. She stared at her reflection in the mirror as Van pressed against her, so that she could feel how hard he was. He let her feel his cock through the white cotton BVDs, and then he slid those down, too. She realized that anyone walking into the bathroom would find them, and that didn’t bother her. Amazingly, it didn’t bother her. How many times had she and her friends interrupted some randy couple shagging in the bathroom? More times than she could remember. Christ, she’d walked in on Violet more than once.

  And just as she had that thought, the door pushed open and Violet stumbled in, clad in her Columbia glory, from the glittery gold top hat to the multi-colored short-shorts. Just like Bette, she even had on short socks and Mary Janes.

  ‘Oh, Jesus. Sorry,’ she giggled, then hesitated just long enough to lock eyes with Dori, before saying to whoever was behind her, ‘This one’s full. Let’s use the little boys’ room.’ And out the girl went. How funny that Dori had only
recently interrupted Violet and Jackson – in the future and at the reunion. Bathrooms were known places for public activity, weren’t they? George Michael had written a song about that – although, Dori thought to herself, he hadn’t written the song yet.

  Van didn’t say a word, didn’t seem to have even noticed the interruption at all.

  He pushed her down to the floor. The bathroom tile was like ice against her bare knees, but she didn’t care. She drew him into her mouth, sucking his cock, loving the way he looked all dolled up as Frank-N-Furter. There was something deliciously twisted to her about blowing a man who was dressed in ladies’ clothes. Even if he were dressed as a man who was playing a man. For an instant she tried to imagine this same scene with Bryce in Van’s place and almost choked on the giggles that threatened to spill out. Bryce would have been horrified if she’d suggested something as twisted as this. But then she had to stop thinking, had to pay attention, because Van was getting more turned on by the moment. She didn’t want to let him down.

  ‘Oh, God, you’re good,’ he crooned at her, running his hands over her hair, finding the ponytail holder and pulling it free. The lines were blurring now. She was dressed in a suit, but with her hair long and loose, she felt like a woman once more. How odd that a simple motion like feeling the wave of her hair flow down her back could undo the magic of her transformation.

  But she wasn’t ready for the magic to end. Not yet.

  Dori shut her eyes, noticing the way Van’s breathing had speeded up as she worked him, the way his skin smelled of ivory soap and cigarette smoke. And then suddenly he was moving her again. Standing her up and flipping her around, slamming into her as she braced herself with palms flat on the mirror.

  She set her face against the glistening glass, loving the way the silver felt against her hot cheeks, the way Van’s body felt behind her. There was something so unbelievably hot about being taken by a guy wearing lingerie, while she was dressed head-to-toe as a man. Who would have thought?

  ‘You’re the best Brad I ever fucked …’ Van whispered darkly to her, and Dori shuddered as she came.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At home that night, Dori’s head was spinning. She looked at the clock. 2:30. Why couldn’t she sleep? Because she was still all riled up from being taken in the bathroom at The Majestic. Taken. That was the perfect word to describe the type of sex they’d had. Van had worked her over so well that her body still hummed from the pleasure. But that wasn’t the real reason she couldn’t sleep. After fucking like that, she would have thought dreams would come easily.

  She showered and slid into her nightgown, then began to wander through the house she’d grown up in. She still paced when she was bothered by something. After her break-up with Bryce, she thought she’d have worn a tread into the hardwood floors in her apartment. But now, there was more space to cover. She did a circuit, finally stopping by her older brother’s bedroom. He was off at college by now. The room had been converted into a guest room/office. She sat on the leather loveseat and kicked up her feet on the arm rest. She preferred hanging out in Miles’ room. Hers had too much baggage. Not good memories versus bad memories. Just memories in general.

  She felt embarrassed by the things she’d read in her diary, mortified by some of the fantasies and desires she’d penned as a youth. Her whole room seemed to mock her, while this one was neutral territory. Besides that, she had begun to really worry about Gael. And that knowledge hurt her head.

  How could she help him?

  How could she stop him from being arrested?

  And should she even try?

  He was guilty, after all, of dealing cocaine. But he wasn’t an evil man. He was Bette’s boyfriend – or the closest thing she had to a steady one. Because Will didn’t treat her right. Not by a long shot.

  She squinted around the room, at the framed movie posters on the wall. Posters from films the whole family had liked: The Godfather, RoboCop, The Terminator. A row of bookcases stood under the window and an entertainment center held centerstage along the far wall. Dori stood up and randomly began to look at the books on the shelves, and then slowly turned back to look at the poster of The Terminator. And suddenly she had an idea. Why had she just given in to her circumstances? Because that’s what she always did. Right?

  Miles wouldn’t have. That’s what she suddenly thought as she looked around his former bedroom. His gilded trophies were displayed in various nooks – up on the top row of the bookshelf, standing on top of the TV. Miles never gave up. ‘He was determined,’ her mother liked to say. ‘He had drive,’ her father always added. While Dori was more the type to move along with the tide. Dori was the one to hear ‘If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you follow?’ But Miles was the one who would have come up with the idea to jump off in the first place, she always wanted to say. Leader or follower. Both could get into trouble.

  If Miles found himself thrust back in time twenty years for no apparent reason, what would he do? Dori continued to look at the book shelves. He would try to find a solution. That’s why he had been in charge of his own internet company at the age of thirty, why he was retired by forty, able now to devote himself fully to his number one passion, flying, having sold his company to his partner.

  Dori’s fingers stopped on the title Hangiri’ out with Cici by Francine Pascal. The book was battered. It had been one of her favorites, one of the first teen novels she’d read. She remembered the plot easily. A girl goes back in time from the 40s. How had it happened? She sat back down on the sofa and thumbed through the novel, remembering different parts so well, rereading her favorite passages.

  Victoria had gone back in time after hitting her head on the window of a train. And the whole thing had seemed like a dream. Until the very end, when she found evidence that she’d really been in the past. The happily ever after of the story was that although she does come back to the future, her world is altered ever so slightly in a positive manner – the strained relationship she’s had with her mother is changed for the better.

  What other books held similar themes? Dori wondered. She tried to think. Wasn’t there generally something in these types of stories about what would happen if she ran into herself? She had that thought constantly in the back of her mind. What if she didn’t fix the situation before her family returned from London? What if she ran into her eighteen-year-old self? Would she actually end up in a loony bin?

  The thought worried her, and she pushed it from her mind. What she really needed was to fix the problem. And there just might be an answer in one of the movies that would help her get back to her normal time. She scanned the shelf once more, but found nothing. What about movies? There were rows of VHS tapes on the lower shelves of the entertainment center, her brother’s neat handwriting on the spine of each one. Jesus, they were in alphabetical order. She thought of the way people rented movies these days – Netflix – or simply downloaded shows onto their X-pods. Her brother would have been in awe if he could see something like that in 1988.

  She looked over the ugly rows of tapes. They seemed hideous and bulky compared to the clean lines of CDs. Nothing. Nothing. Oh, wow. Back to the Future.

  What about that? Would that one hold any answer?

  She tried to remember the storyline. All she needed was some mad scientist to create a time travel device to bring her back to the future. What had it taken in the film? A skateboard? A DeLorean?

  Yeah, like that would happen.

  All she really needed – she decided as the credits rolled – was another drink.

  But a knock on the door startled her. She hurried to the front door, peering through the hole to see Van waving to her. He held up a bottle of tequila in one hand and two limes in the other.

  ‘I saw your light,’ he said, when she opened the door.

  ‘What were you doing out this late?’

  ‘Early,’ he countered. ‘It’s early.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Van said as he peeled her clothes off her
.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That you could be thirty-one …’ She’d lied to him about her age, and now she started to stammer something about taking care of herself, not realizing he hadn’t finished his statement. He put his finger to her lips and then his lips to her lips, and then he broke off laughing. ‘That you could be thirty-one and never have done a body shot before.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ But as she said the words, she knew. ‘Bette,’ she said along with him. ‘But why would she tell you that?’ Dori asked, trying to figure out the type of conversation where someone would casually bring that up.

  ‘I don’t know. We have the strangest discussions at The Beauty Box. You never know whose secrets are going to be spilled.’

  As he said the word ‘spilled,’ he tipped the bottle of tequila gently, letting a little bit of the liquor fill the basin of Dori’s belly. She shuddered at the chill, but Van stopped her. His mouth now went to the tender skin between her hipbones, and he began to lap up every last drop of the tequila.

  ‘But that’s not an actual body shot, is it?’ she asked, breathless.

  ‘No. You need the salt and the lime. I only brought the lime.’ The two green fruits were up on the end table. She and Van were on the floor of the den. ‘Did you want the salt?’ he added.

  Dori didn’t know what she wanted. No, that wasn’t true. What she wanted was for Van to stop playing around and start licking her. Licking her where she needed him to. Forget the bar tricks. She wanted his tongue to make loop-the-loops up and around her clit. She wanted her legs over his shoulders, her hips in the air. She wanted …

  ‘Let’s try it with the salt,’ Van said, answering the query for her. Dori watched sadly as he left the room. She heard him on the stairs, heard him whistling to himself. In less than a minute, he’d returned with a salt shaker and a knife.