by Noir, Roxie
His fingers glide over my clit, and my whole body jolts.
“Turned on?” I whisper, an arm around his shoulders like he’s a life raft.
“Fuckable,” he says.
Suddenly, it occurs to me that he’s missing an important piece of relevant information, even as he strums my clit again and my back arches, my arm tightening around his shoulder, the bannister behind me.
“Caleb,” I murmur, and I’m met with a growl from somewhere deep in his chest, his fingers speeding up.
It takes all my presence of mind to grab his wrist, but I do.
“Wait,” I say.
“You all right?” he asks, going perfectly still.
“I have to tell you something. I’m a virgin,” I say, getting it all out in one breath.
Caleb just looks at me for a long moment. He studies my face like I’m a math problem, the solution slowly falling into place.
“By philosophy or happenstance?” he asks.
I’m still holding his wrist, his fingers still in my shorts, between my slick folds.
“Happenstance,” I say.
“Do you want to stop?”
“No!” I say, then clear my throat, release his hand. “No. It just seemed like…”
His fingers start moving again, and I bite my lip mid-sentence, eyes sliding shut.
“Relevant information,” I force myself to say.
“It doesn’t change my plans, if that’s what you mean,” he says, and pulls me away from the bannister, pushes me toward the ascending staircase. “I’ve thought about this at least once a day for two months, and it was usually with one hand on my cock.”
With that he lowers me to the stairs and then he’s on top of me, my legs around him, and he strokes my clit and kisses me hard and just as I’m getting close to the edge, breath coming in gasps, he stops stroking me and slides his hand down further until his fingers are between my lips, teasing my entrance.
“Yes,” I gasp, not waiting to be asked.
He plunges his fingers into me, all the way to the knuckle, and he crooks them forward and tugs my shorts down with his other hand and then massages my clit with his thumb, in perfect time with his fingers, and every stroke brings me closer and closer and closer to the edge until finally, I lose control.
His forehead is against mine, our faces together, and I’ve got one elbow under me the other in his hair and I’m pretty sure I’m whimpering oh fuck yes over and over again, because other words escape me.
I’ve never come like this before. I’ve had plenty of orgasms — my best friend works for a sex shop, where she teaches a class called The Art of Self-Pleasure, so I’m more than aware of how to get myself off — but never one like this.
No one else has ever made me come. I’ve never needed it like this, to the exclusion of anything else. I’ve never come and still wanted more, still wanted to tear another person’s clothes off and beg them to fuck me, right here on this staircase.
“Holy shit,” Caleb whispers, his thumb skipping past my clit one last time, my whole body jolting. “That was beautiful.”
I’m still lying back on the stairs, trying to catch my breath and Caleb pulls his fingers out of me, pushes my legs apart, climbs on top of me. I reach down and find the undone button on his jeans, acutely aware that he’s still hard as a rock and that despite what just happened, I want him.
And then, just as I find his cock, the organ music stops. I wrap my fingers around him and he groans softly, his hips driving forward, pushing his long, thick shaft through my hand.
“Sank you all very much!” the organist suddenly declares, his words floating down from the top of the stairs. “And may the rest of your All Hallow’s Eve be… delightful.”
With that, steps cross the ceiling above us, creaking along the old wood and instantly, Caleb and I realize the exact same thing.
This is the staircase to the organ.
We’re about to get caught.
Caleb leaps up, grabs my hand, pulls me to standing as I’m already putting my shorts back into place, zipping them, and stuffing my boobs back into my bra. I grab my jacket from the floor just as the top step creaks, and then Caleb’s opening the door and we’re out in the foyer in the middle of a flood of undergrads, all leaving Scarborough Hall at the same time.
We just got caught, I think, my heart nearly exploding in my chest.
Oh God, we fooled around once and instantly got caught.
But I look around. I glance over at Caleb who’s standing there, rigid, affecting a casual pose that doesn’t convince me at all, and I realize: I don’t see anyone I know.
Seconds later, the door behind us swings open and the organist comes out, read cape swishing behind him. Caleb nods at him, and he nods back, and I start to relax because even though we did the dumbest possible thing, we didn’t get caught.
I take a deep breath. We didn’t get caught. I look over at Caleb, who’s looking at me, and I button my vest and pull my jacket on and sidle over to him, his face still flushed, his eyes still bright.
“Take me home?” I murmur.
Before he can answer, I hear my name.
“Thalia!” Margaret shouts and I glance toward the crowd of people, my heart sinking. I step away from Caleb, anxiety swirling in my chest, and then the three of them come through the crowd one at a time.
“There you are!” Harper is saying, dodging a guy wearing a cardboard robot suit. “I was afraid you were…”
Margaret and Victoria are already standing there, silently looking at me, then at Caleb, then back at me.
“Oh,” Harper says, and that’s all. The hum of people talking and shouting and laughing rises around us, but none of the five of us say anything for a long, long moment.
I’m positive that what I just did is written all over my face. I’m positive that my three best friends can guess, probably almost verbatim, what just happened and with whom.
“You ready to go home?” Margaret asks pointedly, shooting a glance at Caleb.
“Yep!” I say, about ten times too excitedly. “Sounds great! Let’s do it!”
Victoria says nothing, but I know the press of her lips, even the disapproving cock of her hips in her half-football-half-fairy outfit.
I don’t want to go with them. I want to go home with Caleb and I’m pretty sure I want to ride him like a race horse, but what choice do I have?
I can’t tell them sorry, I gotta go bang my professor.
I glance over at Caleb, catch his eye. He nods, ever so slightly. There’s a half smile and then Margaret clears her throat very obnoxiously and I turn away and follow them out of Scarborough Hall.
The entire way home they talk about how bummed they are to graduate and how still, no one has guessed my Halloween costume, and how they have so much homework to do tomorrow because they got nothing done today.
And I walk and chat and I’m half afterglowy and half cold because I love my friends but I’d rather be elsewhere, with someone else.
Someone who I didn’t even manage to give a handjob to.
It’s something I’ve never felt guilty about before, but I guess it’s a fun new experience.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Caleb
I jerk off twice when I get home. I don’t think I’ve done that since I was sixteen, but I lay on my bed with the lights off and I can’t stop thinking about Thalia, about the noises she made when I rolled her nipples between my fingers, or about the way her hips bucked when I found her clit, or about the way her eyes rolled shut and she moaned when I sunk my fingers knuckle-deep inside her.
I come hard, just thinking about it. Then I think about it ten minutes later and take care of that, too, because apparently she’s made me a teenager again.
But even after that, I can’t sleep. I can only lie awake, looking at the popcorn ceiling that I’d like to redo, thoughts of Thalia and transgressions swirling in my head.
I think, black-hearted, oh God, what have I done?
&nbs
p; I think, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Half a heartbeat.
I wonder if her friends are going to turn us in and I wonder if anyone else saw us and I wonder if we can possibly keep this up without getting caught.
I wonder if it matters that she’s a virgin. I wonder if it matters that I’m not. I wonder what she’s done and I wonder with whom and I think about what I’ve done and with whom, and I wonder if I should tell her that our encounter on the stairs might be the peak sexual experience of my life.
Finally, hours after getting in bed, I go to sleep.
* * *
“Okay, but — hear me out, dammit June don’t even open your mouth, you don’t know what I’m going to say — a drone is the ring-bearer.”
My soon-to-be-sister-in-law stares at her brother with an expression so stone-faced I start to worry.
Finally, she lifts her drink to her mouth, still regarding her older brother with a mix of wariness, contempt, and plain bafflement.
“Who’s piloting the drone in this scenario?” she asks.
Silas just shrugs.
“Nope, wrong answer,” June says. “You can’t just come up with these half-baked ideas and then not have thought them through. You want a drone ring-bearer? You tell me who’s piloting that shit. You tell me their skill level and you tell me who’s catching it and you tell me who’s troubleshooting this mess and you tell me who is bandaging up Grandma Enid when the drone inevitably hits her and then, maybe then, I will consider your moronic idea.”
“Are you still trying to weasel your way into the wedding party?” I ask Silas, taking a sip of my iced tea.
Silas puts one hand on his chest and tries to look hurt and offended.
“I would never,” he says solemnly.
June just rolls her eyes.
“I was trying to weasel a drone into their wedding party,” he says. “It’s completely different.”
“You want to know a secret?” I ask, sidling closer to Silas.
He lifts both his eyebrows.
“Levi told me Hedwig is his best man,” I say, keeping my voice low. “Saves him the agony of having to choose a human, you know?”
I probably shouldn’t be baiting poor Silas, but I’ll do anything to get my mind off the fact that I had sex with a student last night.
Even though it’s not working at all. Even though the knowledge of what I did feels like a boulder on my chest.
It’s unconscionable. Even if it wasn’t technically intercourse, there’s no mistaking that what we did last night was anything but sex.
If I were someone else, I’d be appalled, no matter what. It’s an abuse of trust and it’s an abuse of power and even though it doesn’t feel at all like any of those things, it feels like I’ve met someone who lights up every room she walks into and makes me want to believe in magic, that’s the cold hard truth.
It’s wrong, and I know it’s wrong, and now I feel awful about myself, and I don’t know how to walk into class tomorrow and look at Thalia, so I’m hassling Silas and June instead.
“I don’t believe you,” Silas informs me. “Though I almost do, because Levi would do that. But I don’t.”
“It’s kind of a good idea,” June says, thoughtfully. “All you assholes can just sit in the front row and chill. Hedwig’s a very good dog, and you’ve still got two more weddings to fight over, probably.”
“No, he has two more to fight over,” Silas says, pointing at me. “Well, he’s got one because the other is his wedding —”
“I’m getting married?” I ask, and even though I’m kidding and I know what it means, the thought sends an odd ripple through me.
They both ignore me.
“ — But for me? This is my one shot,” Silas finishes.
June, his little sister, is marrying my oldest brother Levi. Levi is also Silas’s best friend, and he’s also the entire reason they still haven’t picked wedding parties for a wedding that’s just months away.
Does he stand on Levi’s side, as his lifelong closest friend?
Does he stand on June’s side, as her brother?
He can’t do both, and not being in either wedding party seems so wrong that it’s unconscionable. In the meantime, the rest of us have quietly decided that the suits we wore to Daniel and Eli’s weddings will do nicely for groomsmen suits when we’re inevitably asked two weeks before the wedding.
“Besides, I would make such a good toast,” he goes on.
“We already asked you to make a toast,” June says. “Don’t make me regret giving you a microphone in front of everyone we know.”
Silas just grins.
“Remember that time when you were thirteen, and you wanted to impress that guy you had a crush on, so —"
“Dinner!” Eli shouts, pushing open the back door.
“Thanks!” shouts back June.
Then she turns to Silas.
“You think I won’t kill you at my own wedding,” she says. “I will.”
* * *
After dinner and dessert, I help Seth and Violet clear the dining room and do the dishes, and then I tell them that I’m going to check the back porch for more glasses and plates, just in case, and I head back outside.
There aren’t any glasses or plates out here. I knew there weren’t, but I have the world’s nosiest family. I love them, but I’m not sure they’ve ever once respected someone’s desire to be alone with his thoughts.
Somehow, astonishingly, I get a full seven minutes before the door opens and footsteps cross the deck toward me. Seven minutes of staring out at my mom’s backyard, half thinking about how next time I’m here I should rake the yard and clean out the gutters for her, half thinking about last night and Thalia and how I haven’t even texted her today even though I’ve thought about her every three-point-four seconds.
I don’t know if I can text her, or at least, I don’t know if I should. Can the school administration find that? I know they can track the emails we send from school accounts, but my phone has nothing to do with the school, right?
I’m hyper-aware, hyper-alert, more on edge than I’ve ever been.
Breaking the rules and keeping a secret is so, so much harder than I thought it would be. I don’t even know whether to text a girl.
“What’s wrong?” my mom’s voice says, and I look over in surprise because I assumed it was Seth, coming out here to badger me.
I sigh.
“Nothing,” I tell her.
“Caleb,” she says, in the same tone she always uses when she knows I’m lying to her.
“Mom,” I mimic back.
“Don’t get sassy with me,” she teases. “Come on. Seth mentioned Delilah twice during dinner and you didn’t even react.”
“That’s because he’s none of my business,” I say, raising the dregs of my iced tea to my lips. “If he thinks befriending Satan is a good idea, that’s on him.”
She laughs, resting her forearms on the deck railing, looking out at the backyard with me.
“I did something I really shouldn’t have and now I feel shitty,” I finally say.
“What did you do?”
“I don’t want to say.”
My mom gives a long-suffering sigh, still looking out at the forest.
“How bad?” she asks. “Am I gonna want to call the cops?”
I roll my glass slowly between my hands and consider the question.
On the one hand, Thalia’s a consenting adult, so I’ve done nothing illegal.
On the other, it’s ethically murky at best, and my mom is both a college professor herself and an ardent feminist, so there’s no way she’d take this well.
“Maybe not the cops, but you’d want to call someone,” I tell her.
“Lord,” she says, mostly to herself. “You know, once upon a time I thought that if I kept the five of you alive until you hit eighteen I’d be done with parenting? I was an idiot.”
I just laugh, and she does too.
“Some people believe sharing y
our secrets cleanses the heart and mends the soul,” she offers, and now I frown at her.
“You don’t,” I say. “Clearly.”
“No,” she agrees. “I think that white lies are the only thing standing between polite society and utter barbarism.”
“And also regular lies,” I point out, without venom.
We’ve had some version of this conversation a thousand times in the past ten years. She knows where I stand and I know where she stands, and it’s been a long time since either of us got angry about it.
“I still wish you’d never found out,” she says.
“Me too.”
“Doing a bad thing doesn’t make you a bad person,” she says, after a moment. “Neither does choosing the wrong thing. It just makes you human.”
I swallow, staring forward into the late-autumn night.
“But what are we, if we’re not the sum of our actions?” I ask, not expecting an answer. “What else even matters?”
“Intentions,” my mom says, thoughtfully. “Hopes. Feelings. Thoughts. Desires. All those things matter. If they didn’t, we’d never forgive people who made mistakes.”
“Have you forgiven Dad?”
The question hangs in the air for a moment. For all we’ve talked about this, I’ve never asked about forgiveness before.
“No,” she says, simply. “I haven’t and I’m probably going to be angry with him until the day I die, which doesn’t mean I don’t feel other ways, but I’m pretty sure that one’s here to stay.”
“Oh,” I say, a little surprised at her honesty.
“Just because it’s a virtue doesn’t mean I can bring myself to do it,” she says, shrugging. “He robbed me of a husband, and a partner, and he robbed you of a father, and I really could have used some help around here. God, if someone else could have picked Daniel up from the police station once in a while it would’ve been huge.”
I snort, because the man currently holding a sleeping baby inside raised some serious hell as a teenager.
“I think I’m close to it,” I say, surprising myself. “Forgiveness, not picking Daniel up from the police station.”