She is having her period again. It is true, a true thing obviously I cannot mention. Another true thing is, she is crying very hard over an orange she unpeeled and it turned out to be moldy. I’m walking around her like a hummingbird until she makes me sit down. She tries to laugh, and cries harder. She tries to say something, and hiccups in the middle; I lean in to try to hear whatever it is her mouth is saying. She kisses me instead, her lips sloppy from weeping, hiccupy again but her hands are already running down my body. I’m in her before my shirt is off, my socks on my feet against her socks on her feet. She bites my shoulder and tears a rip I’ll always see. But no one else will.
So, with Alec, I give up, I guess. How long with typing to him without answer, before I don’t even think to do it? What’s there to say about it except, I’m straight and I like girls, and it was just whatever it was?
Keep finding porn he would like, and can’t send it to him.
On the floor I see some drawings she half-made, a couple flowers, some guy’s chin over and over, stubbly, the windowsill so clear for a minute it looks like a photo. She’s not even taking a class, and me with my assigned sketchbook I don’t even know where it is. The chin is mine, I realize, I think, I think.
I’m telling you she started it, a whisper one night with both hands on me up and down.
—Would you fuck another girl?
I could do nothing but pretend not to hear her.
—Tell me.
But I was already harder in her hands. She climbed up with a long kiss, moving her hips, the tip of my cock just barely inside her. —Would you— —Stop.
—fuck another girl?
—Yes.
She plunged onto me. —A first-year.
—What?
—You know, at school. Do you look at them?
—We don’t call them first-years.
—Do you? You do look at them.
I leaned up to bite her shoulder a little but she growled away. —I know you look at them all the time. Wait.
Her hands pressed my shoulders back down and she made it slow. —I want you to.
—What?
—Tonight, tonight. I want you to find a girl at this party, and fuck her.
—Jesus.
She climbed off me and I had trembles like never before. Her eyes looked like a demon in a poster. She locked in to stare at me, her hand quick down her body and busy between her legs.
—You’re crazy.
—Find her …
She said it over the sound of it, in and out of her own self. —Find her, Cole and, no, I will pick her out.
—Grisaille!
—and fuck her.
I came with nobody touching me, a wet firework in the air. I heard it patter down on us and she came too. We said nothing for the rest of the song fading out.
—Were you serious?
She wouldn’t look at me. —Yes.
—What is this?
—It’s just something I want, Cole. It—
—It turns you on?
—It turns me on so much.
And her hand was already on me again and I was fierce and striving with it. —You’re so hard. I love your cock hard, Cole.
But she peeled off me and stood shouldering into her bra, the sunset in the window blazing a ragey scarlet behind her back. It was still early, but the way we were talking about it, felt already too late.
—Come back.
—No. I want to save it. I want you to save it for her.
I rolled the other way and saw an empty bottle on her desk, the usual Spanish or something wine they had cases of. But did she open it tonight, was my question now. Did she finish it alone. —I really want this, Cole.
—This is fucked up.
She was in the mirror with lipstick. Her hair was tousled, untamed. It looked fucked, like we’d been fucking. —There’s nothing fucked up about it. They look at you, Cole, they want something. Give it to them.
—Are you really serious?
—Get dressed. I’ll open a wine.
It was glaring busy inside the party. Kristen, not a lot of people I knew. Grisaille raised her eyes at some girl with braids and another, with her friend, dancing overwild to a song not cool enough for the rest of everybody. And then nervous on a couch, blonde and her eyes painted girly with too much care, too excited for the party, looking around with a big red plastic cup of something, her cheeks flushing, that she’d probably never had before. Grisaille was in my ear with it, licking and whispering. She went to fix three gin and tonics, limes bobbing and sliced too big, so strong the music warbled just with the first sip. —I wish I could watch.
She was slurring like a creature, but we are creatures. The teacher said it in Art, we are creatures, a big wild painting of sinners and punishments with everyone looking like an animal. Monsters sometimes. I felt my smile start up as I walked toward her, crawling up my face like fish hooks were doing it. But it was me. I did it. I did her. There is no way, I cannot between ravage and tonic forget the details.
—Hey.
—Hi.
She was grateful not to be alone. But I just asked if there was room on the couch, and, —What’s your name? I’m Cole.
—Yeah, everybody knows you.
—I have a rep, I guess.
She laughed at how I shrugged off how dangerous she knew me to be. She was nice, she was smiling, Courtney she was almost shouting in my ear over the speakers near us on the mantel. Some talk about a thing onscreen everyone’s sharing. Move my arm round. Move her arm around. Legs rubbing a little by accident, on purpose. Courtney biting her lip and spoiling her makeup.
Upstairs, it was some little girl’s room. Cartoon sheets. The kiss was sweet and fluttery, so wrong for what I was doing. She held my head to kiss me more, it felt like a skull. She unbuttoned her own shirt, with help, slipped down her pants with a silky scarf she’d rigged as a belt. Her eyes were shiny and flat, though, glassy like in old museum tableaus. Endangered species. Another kiss that was nothing but gin and spit, and her hands, both of them, between my legs too rough but not too rough not to work. My pants locked chain-gang around my ankles, so I stopped. To kick off my shoes, I stopped. My hand already had the condom Grisaille had found and put in my pocket, but it still felt like there was something up for grabs, a shaky question in the air. She was sitting up a little, to kiss me again or maybe to leave, a fierce kiss on the mouth.
—Do you want to?
And then,
—Are we good?
is what I muttered against her, and she nodded and nodded, fast like chattering teeth. And then her grunts, harsh, and my name, Cole, but no other words, not stop, not anything. A tight fuck quick. Definitely not no, neither of us said that. Our mouths kept busy doing anything but no. These details scraping at me, telling not even myself what happened, and with are you OK? and Yeah OK I was back in the hallway, downstairs with my shoes still untied. Grisaille was very drunk, alone on a folding chair they’d backed into a corner, almost passed out.
—You smell like her.
—Let’s go home.
Her kiss was fast, very ferocious. —You are so fucking hot, you make me almost—