Needs must.
“Oh.” Dean finally drops the suitcase and takes a hesitant step toward me, plunging balled fists into his pockets. “I’d just…well I figured, it would make sense. Kind of. After…you know.”
Ah. Yes. My being a lesbian would make blessed sense to this rejected, dejected man-child. Part of me feels desperately sorry for him, but the other part wants to spit that he deserved this all along for invading my space with all the watching. Jesus, he’s still doing it now—I’d barely pulled up in the driveway when he appeared.
A bit of me wants to let slip my rehab stint—the one I fell into not long after I fell into his arms. He’d appreciate the insinuation that he was somehow responsible, and while his conscience would waver, his ego would swell. And win.
“I’m sorry.” I give a rueful shrug. “You know that wasn’t personal, right? I just had some stuff to work out.”
“I guess people experiment in college.” He tries to say this playfully, though his eyes are too solemn to pull it off.
You’d think he’d be turned on by the picture, not depressed by it. But boys are not the predictable machines magazines tell us they are. One night, I gave in, thinking that if I just gave him what he wanted, he’d back off. Only it turned out, in the end, he wanted much more than sex; he longed for feelings, smug oversharing on Facebook, sweaty promises and private jokes. He took his time, tried to make it special and romantic, and all the while I only felt him on that base, chemical level, the kind that spits fire into your flesh but never spews embers past the smoke. It was shockingly cathartic to take out my anger over his watching me by dragging my nails down his back, bucking up against him. Sinking my teeth into the smooth, firm skin of his bicep. I didn’t expect the first time to feel good; didn’t expect to orgasm, yelping into his shoulder; but I did. I also wanted him to shut up and sod off the moment it was over.
That was nearly two years ago. He still hopes.
Funny…the same thing is going on with Rachel, more or less. But I learned from Dean, learned to give her what she needed, since I too need more from her than a fuck. People are like slot machines, aren’t they? Put in enough, position yourself in the right way, and eventually you can just take what you need and run.
What a fine example of a human being I am.
Dean stares over me to the bed. It’s freshly made up now, the sheets clean, the comforter neatly folded back. Perhaps he’s remembering what a mess we once made of it. Such a triumphant mess. We were both so proud of ourselves afterwards; both for very different reasons, of course, but we moved together in the sticky grip of it anyway.
I could drag him down to that bed right now. Beg him. He’d give me exactly what I wanted; I’m sure of that. Rachel’s pretty and generous, and utterly devoted…and not enough. Never enough. I miss the crushing weight of a man. But then my life is so tangled already, knots of college and secrets rubbing against each other with grim friction, and my nerves are so brittle. Today, I’m all out of cruelty, and that’s the biggest comfort of all—that I can run out of it, that I’m not like him up in his tower, glowering down at the world and basking in his own endless post-fuck triumph. He breaks what he fucks. The world is his smashed-up, violated oyster.
“Have you been experimenting, Dean?” I attempt to joke.
“Me? Jeez, no.” He pretends to shudder, gesturing to himself as he goes. “This here is a girls-only zone.”
“Well. I hope you find a girl, then.”
“I found a lot of them.”
I believe it. He’s Abercrombie hot.
He bites his lip. “None of them are like you, though.”