One Night Only (12 page)

“Jared, please.”

He smiled, just for a second, before kissing me again, pressing my fingers harder against my clit. That last bit of pressure was all it took to push me over the edge, my orgasm slamming into me like a freight train. I could no longer keep my eyes open, my pussy clamping down on his cock, Jared moving my fingers so quickly I could hardly keep up. Throwing my head back, I screamed, the metal walls bouncing the sound all around us, my free hand still squeezing his shoulder. I could barely breathe, my lungs struggling for each gasp of air. Jared released my hand, grabbing on to my hips as he pounded into me furiously, coming hard just as I was finishing, his powerful thrusts pushing me back on the counter until the shelves were digging into my back.

Suddenly, everything stopped. The truck stopped swaying and Jared and I were quiet. He kissed me, first on my sweaty forehead and then on my lips. We straightened ourselves out, cleaning up the mess we had just made. Jared and I stood facing each other, just a few feet apart in the tiny space. I didn't know what to say, but I should have known that Jared would.

“Sorry, but I think your burger is cold by now.”

“It's no problem Jared. I'm sure it will still taste amazing.”

“Just like you.”

He kissed me, pressing the Styrofoam container into my hands. I left the truck, and as soon as I got back to my car, Jared pulled away into the night. I watched the black and silver truck disappear over the hill. That night, I feasted on the best burger I'd ever had, the new sauce even better than I expected
it to be. Jared managed to satisfy me again that night, without even being there.

Soon after that night, Jared turned in his big, beautiful truck for a head chef gig at a fancy restaurant downtown. The place became so popular, it was nearly impossible to get a table. I hear the burgers are fantastic.

 

 

 

 

 

T
he first thing, if you were me, was that you didn't want to seem needy. Second, you didn't want to be uncool. And third, a cliché: you didn't ever want to be a cliché, but always extraordinary, not commonplace in any way. So I seemed together and in control, interesting and cool, up in my tower above it all, and better than anything that happened to me.

Confession: I was a needy, uncool cliché and a really lonely girl.

Our dorm suite had three bedrooms, two freshman girls in each, and a central living room, with couch, chairs, lamps and an ugly beige rug in the middle, plus a compact refrigerator and big-screen TV, courtesy of Inez's parents. After amiably agreeing about which posters would go up on the living room walls, we made another agreement: if a girl had a guy over, her roommate should sleep out on the couch. This seemed only fair and made sense, but we soon learned you had to get your combos right.

I started out sharing a room with Inez who had lived a very
cushy, protected life in the Chicago suburbs.

“I was raised in a golden cage,” she told us. “Wonderful but a trap.”

Now that she was liberated, Inez freaked. First weekend, first off-campus party, out on a patio that was loud, sweaty and smoky with rock music, dancing and grilling ribs, plus the sickening smell of warm beer, Inez and some other girls got up on boys' shoulders and, with other boys yelling “Flash, flash, flash!”, raised their shirts and displayed their tits and not just once either, like it was an initiation, but many times. Their tits seemed to enjoy being looked at and looking back at everybody like eyes. Very liberated. Very inebriated. Welcome to college.

“If I ever do that,” I said to my suitemate Wendy, who roomed with Sarah, “I'm giving you permission right now to bitch-slap me across the face.”

“I'm sort of tempted, just to see what flashing feels like.”

“Oh, they're all just acting like stupid college kids.”

“That's what they are.”

“Cliché.”

College is a time for barely formed people to achieve some kind of form by trying out identities to see what works. Me, too. I was the worst and my cool mask got stuck.
Lift it off, someone, please.
But no one could. I wouldn't let them, and being off in my own atmosphere became a habit. Six weeks in college and I hadn't even kissed anyone. I was having trouble imagining a guy's tongue in my mouth; that was how bad it got.

There was a way out: drinking and taking drugs. But I didn't let myself do those things either. I thought it was uncool and disgusting to get wasted even though everyone was doing it. That's how cool and above it all I was.

Here's what would happen: at a party, people talked and shouted, people danced and drank beer, people hooked up and
left together or disappeared into bedrooms, everybody liberating herself like Inez and Wendy, while I wandered among it all like a ghost, a forbidding presence, like I was the only adult there. In the role I was trying out for, no one was good enough for me. They were all drunk college kids, clichés.

Rooming with Inez, I wound up sleeping on the couch a lot, or in a chair if Sarah already had claimed the couch because Wendy had someone over too. Once, Inez brought two guys back from some party.

“So, one's for me right?” I cracked as I gathered my comforter in my arms. “Thanks.”

“Get your own.”

Inez was escaping the golden cage at many men per hour.

Soon it became obvious that Sarah and I should share a room because neither of us ever brought a guy home. Sharing a room with Sarah was even more discouraging. She was a high achiever, busy every second. She was on the swimming team and would be on the Lacrosse team in the spring. She did volunteer work at a shelter downtown and was going to med school though she hadn't decided on her specialty yet. Sarah, who could survive on very little sleep, stayed up studying all hours at her desk and then when her alarm rang at five a.m. so she could go swim laps and she got right up, you knew you were blessed to be in the presence of a superior person you just had to kill.

I was a dramatic arts major, stage acting. It was a comfortable place for me to immerse myself in a character and hide. First role I get cast in, I'm a widow whose husband has been killed by the state for political reasons. Two men fight over me: a colonel out of lust and a comrade of my dead husband's for other less carnal reasons. Hovering over it all but never speaking is the ghost of my husband who was like the gentlest guy in the world. I've got torn loyalties. The play ends ambiguously after less than
an hour of stage time: the colonel, whose lust I share but don't act on, lifts my veil. Blackout. Half the time I had no idea what was going on. The colonel overacts, the comrade underacts, the ghost of my husband stands on risers at the back of the stage lit up from below.

No matter. It was a journey of transformation and discovery as my acting professor who was directing the play said. I immersed myself in the role. I went to thrift shops and found a black skirt and matching jacket, a black pillbox hat with a net veil and black high heels. The costume person said no to the skirt and jacket, but agreed that I could wear the hat and shoes onstage and thanked me for finding them.

Then it happened: one night, Sarah brought a guy to our room, a tall, strapping swimmer with a shaved head and shaved legs, long loose arms, big hands and a 4.0 GPA. She had met him at the pool and they trained together. The room didn't seem big enough for the athletic sex they were about to have. I gathered my comforter in my arms. That's an indelible image from that time, me gathering up my comforter from my bed and stumbling out. What was wrong with me?

“What's wrong with me?” I asked Wendy, who was in the living room.

“Guys are intimidated. You don't flirt and you don't put out any signals you're available.”

“I'm not available. I'm waiting.”

“Well, then, there you go: is it any wonder you don't get laid?”

“I mean, I haven't met anyone I like.”

“What about the guys in the play? They seemed nice.”

“One overacts, one underacts, one doesn't say anything.”

“They're people, not actors. And this is life, not a play.”

“Right. I should remember that.”

But I didn't. Next party, the week before we opened the play, I dressed up in my widow's costume: hat, shoes, the whole bit. I spent a long time making up my face though no one could see how pretty I was unless they lifted the veil. I was gorgeous and sexy but only I knew it, waiting to be discovered, as usual. In my mind, I was a bride trapped in a widow's dress waiting for the right man to recognize me. I wanted someone so sure of himself he would lift the veil; something like that was my naïve college girl's plan.

Of course, it didn't work out. My scenario was too involved, too stupidly metaphorical and crazy and, at the end of the night, I wound up in the basement on a couch with Wendy and Josh, the actor playing the ghost of my husband. Josh needed a ride back to campus. I was the designated driver, naturally, and people still had to be gathered for the ride.

I danced with Josh a couple of times and he didn't say much, just like his ghost character in the play, but he was a relaxed dancer, as off in his own world as I was in mine and comfortable not talking, and I liked that and thought maybe all those hours being onstage with him and married to his character added up to something between us. Why not him?
Lift the veil, Josh, lift the veil
—but he didn't.

The next thing I knew I couldn't see. I must have dozed off on the basement couch and someone must have turned off the lights from the top of the stairs. My legs were stretched in front of me and my skirt hiked up to my knees from sliding down in my sleep. Hours could have passed or minutes, hard to tell, though the party had gone very quiet upstairs. I had no idea whose house it was. My eyes moved but didn't show me anything because there was no light to see by. I closed my eyes, hesitating just a few minutes more before trying to find out what was what.

I still had my widow's veil down and my black high heels on.
I was vaguely aware of the strangeness of me being in a stranger's house at who knew what hour, of the strange person I had become, half there, half in a dream, but completely isolated. Loneliness can be a drug that makes you lethargic or it can be like water you take on as you sink to the bottom. You can sink into it and there's a kind of comfort in that. You can get drunk on loneliness like other people get drunk on beer. In some strange and similar way it makes you numb to what's really happening. Did Inez know what was happening? Did I?

I felt a stirring like a whisper at the hem of my skirt where it rested against my knees. In my drowsy state, I wasn't sure it was anything or a trick of my mind. The material seemed to fold back, as if someone was doing it, weightless fingers drawing it up and away. I was a child pretending sleep and pretending not to know what was happening to her and, creepy as it sounds, I wanted to be caressed as I slept. I wanted someone so bold he would know I wanted him to do that. Crazy. My vagina felt the first sweep of blood rolling in, a surge of magnetism and heat. Of course, I couldn't let it happen. It was crazy and creepy but to stand at the brink and imagine it before anything happened was exciting.

There was still someone next to me on the couch, I didn't know who, probably Josh who had been there before. I hoped it was still him. Whoever it was took a deep breath and I took a deep breath back, a first acknowledgment, a first communication, a first agreement, maybe. Whoever it was wouldn't dare touch me without permission. But had I just given him permission with my breathing? On the staircase of seduction, each glance and word, each kiss and touch must grant permission to take the next step, but we were quiet in the dark, only breathing. I wasn't totally sure who he was but he knew me and must have thought I knew him and so in his mind it wasn't creepy at all. Unless, it wasn't Josh but some creepy stranger.
No. That made no sense, I realized later.

Through the couch, I felt the motion of his arm and of his hand sliding beneath the hem of my skirt. He hadn't touched me yet but I was going crazy, my heart beating like mad. His fingers caressed my inner thigh just above the knee, far from anywhere private, but my thighs lit up like two bright streets and every cell of my skin was aching to be touched like lips do to be kissed. I took a deep breath and he breathed back. The urge to speak was just as strong as the one not to speak. I almost couldn't take it. I don't know why I didn't speak except that I couldn't. In my mind I said,
What are you doing, Josh?
But not out loud. So I decided I was letting him.

Bolder now and with more weight and pressure, his fingers caressed me higher up, halfway there. My pussy was emanating so much heat I knew he had to feel it. He took a deep breath and I breathed back as if we were kissing, breathing through each other. I gave my hips a surrendering tilt forward and spread my legs a bit more to welcome him higher. He must know, he had to be sure I was into this with him totally now. He traced his fingers along the curve of my thigh, learning the shape of my leg and the feel of my silken skin. It's the softest, smoothest part of me, my inner thigh. Right there, I'm still a baby. I took a deep breath and he breathed back. He let the full weight of his hand rest on my thigh, very close to my cunt, which wanted to swallow his hand up but she and I waited like ladies, of course.

He turned his body toward mine, curling into me, his head above my shoulder, his mouth close to my ear, so his hand could better reach where it wanted. He breathed into my ear like a hot beast about to devour me. I breathed back. I was sopping wet and swelling with the desire to draw him inside. I tilted my hips to give him easier access and his fingers moved down through the hair of my cunt, riding over the shape of my pubic bone, to
touch my hot wet flesh. He put his fingers inside me and slid them up into my vagina, which swelled to meet him and gave way, swelled and gave way.
Oh.
I made a sound, close to speech; strange to hear my own voice as I imagined he was hearing it,
Oh.
Barely disturbing the quiet.