The Fixer: New Wave Newsroom (7 page)

“Yes,” I cried, grabbing his shoulders to keep from falling over.

A few seconds of suction, and I was shuddering and trying to muffle my screams so I wouldn't wake his neighbors.

I waited until she was done shaking, holding her tight with my arms wrapped around her middle—I was still kneeling—and willing myself not to come then and there. I had only known her a couple weeks, but I knew her well enough to know that in a minute, she'd become all flustered and embarrassed.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

There it was—not at all like the shouted invocations of the Lord that had been ripping from her throat earlier.

That was my cue. Because whatever else was going to happen, I didn't want her to be embarrassed. So, in a repeat of my earlier move, I flipped us both onto the bed, but this time I came down on top of her, bracing myself on my elbows as I kissed her breasts.

“That was—”

I whipped myself up and kissed her mouth. I didn't want to talk. Not yet. I just wanted to…savor this. Unlike at the construction site, there was no danger. No hurry. Nothing stopping us.

It sounded idiotic, but since it was her first time, I'd wanted to make sure she came. I wasn't schooled in the ways of virgins, but the conventional wisdom seemed to be that it could hurt the first time. And I didn't want to disappoint her. I'd almost made it through my time at this school without giving a shit about any of my fellow students or what they thought of me. Almost. So, yeah, I'd been…intent in my onslaught. I'd thought I'd been doing it for her, but honestly, ten seconds in, and nothing had ever turned me on more than torturing that girl with my tongue. And now I wanted to her to make those gutting mewling noises again. There had been something insanely hot about anchoring her pelvis, having her at my mercy while I'd worked her over.

But it turned out that a Jenny who was free to exert her will was pretty hot, too. Especially when her will seemed to involve wrapping her legs around my hips and clinging to me as if I were the art building in the path of the bulldozers.

“Oh my God, Matthew,” she breathed, breaking the deep kiss she'd been planting on me. “I had no idea.”

I grinned against her mouth. Honestly, I hadn't either. But I wasn't about to say that. So I bent to kiss my way down to her breasts. It suddenly seemed a crime that they had been so thoroughly neglected before, when I'd been on my knees. I took of her bra to reveal perfect handfuls of soft flesh, tipped by dark pink buds that I couldn't not put my mouth on.

She inhaled sharply, and I would have stopped to check that it was a happy inhale and not a distressed one, but she also bucked her hips, and since her legs were still wrapped around me, she lifted her whole pelvis off the bed and pressed it against my cock. It was like she was trying to angle me inside her.

“Will you do this already?” she pleaded.

I stopped everything, and her eyes, which had been half-closed, flew open. “Are you sure?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes.

I laughed. In that moment, she was so authentically herself, the Rainbow Brite-Jenny-journalist-crusader, that I couldn't help it.

“Yes,” she said. “I'm sure.” There was a tinge of impatience in her tone.

Or maybe it wasn't her tone. Maybe it was the hand that snaked down between our bodies and grabbed my dick.

I grunted, and she let go like it was on fire.

“Oh my God. Was that wrong? I've never touched one of those before.”

I shook my head, trying not to laugh again. I wasn't laughing at her, but I didn't know how to explain it. I was laughing because it was either that or detonate.

So I slid in. I was inside Jenny, and it was like all her crazy colors were exploding inside
me
as she stretched to accommodate me. She was so tight. So slick. I stayed still for a moment, afraid that if I moved, we'd be done before we started. After a few breaths to gather myself, I started a slow rhythm, using one hand on her clit again. She must have still been sensitive from her orgasm because she winced when I made contact, but I persisted. She was trying to hold her head up, but after a minute of moving against each other, she gave up on a huge sigh and let her head fall back against the pillow as her eyes slipped closed.

I wished I could paint her like this. The sight of her, sprawled on my bed, naked, open to me…like the sun, it was almost too much to bear looking at, yet I wanted desperately to preserve the image forever.

She started holding her breath for little stretches, which was what she'd done last time just before she came, so I let myself slam into her, grinding hard when I was buried to the hilt and letting my own eyes close so I could submit to the torrent washing over me. I came to the edge, both relieved and resentful that it was about to be over. The last thing I remember, before I let the drowning happen, was Jenny exclaiming, wonder in her tone, “I'm going to come
again
!”

When it was over and I had swum back to the shore, heart pounding, chest heaving, she was quiet—
for once
. I didn't quite know what to do with that. But also, if she wasn't going to speak, I certainly didn't know what to say. I was afraid if we started talking, it would puncture this…balance we had achieved, and she would go back to her room. And whatever else happened, I didn't want her to encounter her shitty roommate tonight. Or, worse, Royce. The idea of Royce bothering her. The idea of Royce
looking
at her. No.

The silence that had settled wasn't an uncomfortable one, so I thought it was probably okay to just let it be. So I held her, her head on my chest, and listened to the sound of her breathing ratcheting down. The spaces between each inhale grew longer. Her body grew heavier. I could feel myself losing the battle against sleep, too. I didn't want to, though, not quite yet. So I gently eased her off my chest, praying she wouldn't wake up.

It was nearly dark. To think, the day had started with me drawing her, and ended with her shattering beneath me. It had started with me trying to blend the right colors to capture the ridiculous blue of her ridiculous dress, and now that ridiculous dress was wadded up on the floor of my room. I pulled the covers up over her, leaving only her face exposed to the dim extraneous light filtering in from the courtyard through the crack in the curtains. I'd always called her Rainbow Brite, but when she didn't have her fluffy, colorful clothes on, she was actually quite pale. Her lips, pink and plump against her porcelain skin, were the only shot of color on her tonight. It reminded me of a muted version of the woman on the Duran Duran cover.

I lowered my lips, placing them, feather-light, against hers.

The movement was gentle, measured, calculated not to startle her.

But the thought that whipped into my consciousness as I did so was the reverse: unexpected, unbidden, jarring.

I was made to kiss Jenny Fields.

W
ell
, I'd finally gotten my money's worth from the dress, I thought, grinning as I picked it up off the floor of Matthew's room and shimmied back into it while he slept. A slice of bright sunshine razored into the room where the curtains stood open a few inches. There were no clocks of any sort in his room, so I had no idea what time it was.

But I did know that I had to pee something fierce—not to mention get that sponge out. (
Please let the sponge have worked.
)

But no. I wasn't going to think about reality yet. Sponges and Nessa and Royce and the art building and graduation and Dad—none of it. When I reached the door to the bathroom, I pretended it was all those things and pushed them away as I straightened my arms to open it.

What if I just decided to ignore reality for a little while? I had never done that. I peed and got rid of the sponge. I didn't even say a prayer for its efficacy, because I decided that anxiety was part of the reality I was now officially on hiatus from. I gave myself a quick glance in the mirror, but who cared what I looked like, right? Reality: not interested. See? This was fun.

The one reality I couldn't escape was my morning breath, so, lacking a toothbrush, I swished with water as hot as I could stand and hoped for the best. Given the…amazingness of last night, I was pretty sure Matthew wasn't going to care.

Besides, I thought, unable to resist a little skip as I padded back down the hall to his room, I had learned that there were plenty of other places he could put his mouth. My face heated as the parts in question jumped to attention. My attraction to Matthew had been well established before last night. It was, in fact, why I had thrown the sponge in my bag when he called and asked if he could draw me. I hadn't assumed it would happen, but a part of me had hoped it would.

And when it had…dear God, I'd had
no idea
.

I had been thinking of my virginity like a cast that had come off. I didn't want it anymore, and sex was what I had to do to saw it off. It wasn't that I'd been expecting it to be unpleasant. I just hadn't known it was possible for someone to be so tender and deliciously rough at the same time. So solicitous yet ravenous. My whole body tingled from the memory. My poor, poor body had had a taste of what was possible and, I feared, was never going to let me forget it.

I stood with my hands pressed against another door, the door to Matthew's room. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I knew one thing with certainty. This time I didn't want to push anything away. I didn't even want to fix anything. I didn't want to talk about what he was going to do after graduation. At this moment, I didn't even care about the art building. (
I didn't care about the art building!
)

I just wanted more of the person who had made me feel this way, like reality was just an inconvenience to be postponed for later. So I pushed open the door that stood between us.

He was bent over, pulling on his jeans, and disappointment cut through me. But it was probably late. He probably had to be in class.

“Hey,” I ventured, not even trying to temper the grin I could feel splaying across my face. God, to look at that bare, gently sculpted chest. At those arms and hands, so capable of so many things: punching Royce, drawing something so beautiful it hurt, bringing me to orgasm. To have them displayed like that, like I had enough ownership to see him so casually bared, made my stomach flutter.

He looked up, finished pulling up his jeans, and straightened, echoing my greeting. “Hey.” There was no answering smile as he turned and began stuffing things into his backpack. “So, I gotta get to the studio,” he said, still facing away from me. “I have an appointment with my mentor for my senior portfolio later today.” When he finally stopped messing with his backpack, he had to turn around—there was no way for him to not look at me as he left the room. But the face that turned back to me wore a neutral, bland expression. Not angry or upset. Just…empty. Not the way I imagined a guy should look at a girl when he'd spent a good portion of time the night before with his head between her legs. Or forget that, even—what about the drawings? The confrontation at the pub? The cartoon? Was that all just…gone?

“Right.” I blinked several times in succession, willing the tears that were gathering to dissipate. I knew I was being blown off. It wasn't like I thought we'd become girlfriend and boyfriend. Not necessarily, anyway. I started to say something to that effect, to reassure him. But I swallowed the words before they could escape, adding them to the bitter lump forming in my throat. Because to say something like that sounded desperate, implied that I had entertained the notion long enough to dismiss it.

But I had. That was the horrible truth I could never admit to anyone. I'd been pushing away reality because I hadn't wanted to overthink things. I hadn't wanted to
ruin
things. I'd decided for one second in my life to just let myself be. But the problem with exorcising reality was that the thing that replaced it was fantasy. Matthew and Jenny, the unlikely couple, striding across campus hand in hand. Me bringing him food. Watching him paint. Publishing his cartoons.

Falling asleep in his arms.

Fantasy. It was, by definition, false. It floated away on the wind.

And once it was gone, it left a vacuum. And what do they say? Nature abhors a vacuum? It must be true, because once fantasy is gone, reality comes whooshing back in, violently filling all the space available to it, clattering up against your insides.

There was nothing left to do but try to save face. I looked around the room and spotted a shoe. As I bent to collect it, he said, “Take your time.”

I glanced up. Had I misinterpreted him saying he had to go to the studio?

“If you can just turn the lock on the doorknob before you shut it behind you, that would be great.”

No. I had read the situation correctly. He was going to leave, and he wasn't even going to wait two minutes for me to get my stuff together. He couldn't get away from me fast enough. I didn't trust my voice, so I just nodded. This was what happened when you didn't plan, when you shoved reality aside: you weren't prepared for heartbreak when it came crashing down on you like an anvil falling from the sky in an old-fashioned cartoon.

He paused with his hand on the doorknob and cleared his throat. “See you.”

He didn't wait for my reaction, which was good, because he didn't see me start to cry.

The thing is, I had never kissed anybody before without getting something out of it. It had always been a prelude to something else. Not a bargaining chip, per se. I wasn't
that
calculating. But, in the past, kisses had always been…transactional. The first act in a longer production. Not ends in themselves.

I was made to kiss Jenny Fields.
That had been the thought drifting through my mind last night as I succumbed to sleep. As unlikely as the situation was—as unlikely as
she
was—I hadn't been able to stop myself from pressing my mouth against her petal-pink lips.

But in the harsh light of day, I could not ignore the question that followed: why? Why on earth would I have bothered kissing someone who wasn't even awake to feel it?

And as I laid there, pretending to be asleep but peeking at her as she struggled into her dress and slipped out of my room—her bare feet signaling that she was only headed for the bathroom, and not, as my cowardly heart had hoped, actually leaving—I forced myself to confront the truth: I knew what that rib-cracking feeling last night had been.

And that was
not
happening.

I'd been on my knees before her, for fuck's sake. Rainbow Brite had literally brought me to my knees.

And I could not afford that kind of distraction. The end was in sight, if I could just wrangle Curry and this senior project. I hadn't been working myself to the bone for nearly four years to go soft just before the finish line. And that was what Rainbow Brite made me: soft. Soft wasn't going to get me where I needed to be. Soft was unacceptable. As I stalked across campus, shaky and starving, self-disgust flowed through me. Maybe it would freeze the weakness out of me, harden the lava I'd imagined Jenny pouring through me last night, leaving me strong and unbendable.

As I yanked open the huge, heavy oak door to the art building to get my drawings before I caught the bus into the city, I paused, breathing heavily, and physically rested my forehead against the wood. This door was more than a hundred years old. The thought was oddly grounding. Calming. The door never changed. It had acquired the patina of age, of course, its scrapes and nicks marking the march of years. But it hadn't changed fundamentally. Hard and difficult to move, it was immune to the generations of students, to their dramas, to the passage of something as insignificant as time.

After a few more deep breaths, the panic began to loosen its hold on my gut enough that I was able to make my way to the studio to fetch the drawings I would bring to Curry. I packed quickly, averting my eyes from the images as I slid them into a portfolio. By the time I pushed against the building's front door again, I was composed. Solid, like the door. Made of strong, unbreakable wood.