Taryn – Day ten

With each passing day, Marc allowed me to see a little more of who he was. In my opinion, he was an interesting man with an oddly keen moral compass. I maintained an expectation of him eventually doing or saying something I disagreed with. So far, however, he’d exposed no major faults.

I’d been ten days without so much as a single drink of alcohol. Although I didn’t consider myself an alcoholic, I viewed the accomplishment as being more than noteworthy. Sitting with Stefanie in the very bar that I met Marc in was testing my ability to abstain, though.

“You what? Not a drink?” Stefanie asked.

“Not one.”

“It doesn’t bother you that I am?”

“Nope.”

Her face contorted. “Did he ask you to stop?”

“No. I decided not to drink on my own. You know how I am when I’m drunk. I want to get to know him without any influence from alcohol. This way, I get a clear picture.”

“I think that’s kind of awesome. Really.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“So, what’s new with him? Anything? Did you do anything on Saturday night?”

It was Monday, and as I hadn’t seen her since Saturday at noon. I considered telling her about the coffee I’d attempted to drink. Instead, I chose to tell her about the great oyster feed. “No, not really. We went to some nice restaurant, and I ate oysters. That was weird.”

“You ate an oyster?”

I held six fingers in the air. “Six of them.”

She raised her clenched fist to her mouth. “Oh. My God.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“How can you say that? They’re alive. You know that, right?”

“No. They bust ‘em open with a knife, and it kills them. But they’re dangerously close to alive. Freshly slaughtered.”

She heaved into her hand, acting like she was barfing. After a moment, she lowered her fist and shot me a look of disgust. “Cum is the grossest thing in the whole world. I don’t care what anyone says, nobody likes cum in their mouth. Nobody. We do it because guys think it’s cool. I’ll let a guy come in my mouth, but I’d die before I eat an oyster. An oyster is like a little sack of baked cum.”

“Raw oysters are nastier than cum. Times ten. Oysters Rockefeller are better.”

With her mouth partially open, she stared back at me, blinking.

“Actually,” I said. “They’re a lot better. I’d eat them again.”

“What? Did you guys have an oyster sampler platter? Seriously, if you did, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“No. Just two. Raw, and Rockefeller.”

She covered her mouth with her palm. “What’s a Rockefeller?”

“Cooked oysters with spinach and cheese. It was pretty good as far as I could tell. Hard to say for sure with my tongue all jacked up.”

“What was wrong with your tongue?”

“It had perfume on it.”

She lowered her hand. Her forehead creased slightly. “How did that happen? You’re not supposed to spray it on your face, dork.”

“We just had this long discussion about relationships in Pakistan. He was telling me about twelve-year-old girls getting swapped for debt, and--”

“Wait. What? Twelve years old? Oh my God, he’s a disgusting creep--”

“Seriously? He is not.” I shot her a shitty glare. “And, you didn’t let me finish.”

“If he was talking about--”

“Let. Me. Finish.”

Her eyebrows raised comically. “Finish.”

“We were talking about arranged marriages in different countries. He wanted to know whether I thought they could actually be in love, or if they just cohabitated, living angry but doing it out of respect for tradition and family.”

“You mean like when the parents pick your husband for you? Bring some dude to the house and say, here’s your husband?”

“That’s it.”

“What did you say?”

“Tell me what you think,” I responded. “Then I’ll tell you what I said.”

“I think they can fall in love. If they have to be together, they probably decide falling in love is what’s best, so they do it.”

Her belief was interesting. It was similar to mine, and I wondered how many other people felt the same way.

“So, you think it’s something you just decide to do? I’m going to love this guy?”

She gave a half-assed shrug. “I think it can be.”

“That’s kind of what I said. Okay, so we had that discussion, and he ends it by saying, to survive, a relationship requires sacrifice from both sides. In the absence of sacrifice, ‘the relationship’ will be sacrificed. I was digesting what he said, and these freaking oysters showed up. So, I decided it was time for me to make a sacrifice.”

“That doesn’t tell me how you got perfume in your mouth.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I giggled. “When the oysters showed up, I went to the bathroom and sprayed my tongue like ten times with Bombshell. That way I wouldn’t be able to taste them.”

“You’re serious?”

“Uh huh.”

“Did it work?”

“My tongue was burning, my mouth tasted like perfume, and for some reason, it made me really dizzy. But, other than the raw ones being gross, they didn’t taste like anything.”

“That’s insane. I’m surprised you didn’t get sick.”

“I did. Kind of.”

“What do you mean?”

“I crapped like ten times after we left. I’m guessing from the perfume. I was up all night. It was terrible.”

She laughed. “Probably those raw oysters.”

“I doubt anyone would eat them if they made you crap like a goose every time you ate them. He said he loves the things. I’m guessing he’s not the type that likes to stay up crapping all night.”

“Was he sick, too?”

“Didn’t seem like it.”

“Was he running to the bathroom?”

“I only stayed at his house for a short time, But, he wasn’t when I was there.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t poop at someone else’s house.”

“I can’t really, either.”

“You did at his place, though.”

“No. I waited.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I waited. Until I got home.”

“If you could wait, it wasn’t the oysters. It was the perfume. Bad oysters wouldn’t let you wait. You would have pooped in the car on the way home. I ate bad sushi once when I was dating Jerry, and I pooped a little bit while we were driving home.”

“Oh, my God,” I gasped. “That’s gross.”

Her gaze dropped to the floor. “Yeah, it was.”

The waitress handed Stefanie her beer. “One Corona with lime. Anything else?”

She looked up, scrunching her nose in the process. “I don’t think so.”

I shook my head. “I’m good.”

She took a sip of her beer. “What are you going to do when the thirty days are up, and he says it just didn’t work out?”

“It is working out.”

“You think it is. You never know with those guys. They’re weird, and they do shady shit.”

“He’s not one of those guys. He’s not a Dom, I asked.”

“Kate said he was.”

“Kate was wrong,” I said. “He’s sexually demanding, not a Dom.”

“What’s the difference?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea. That’s just what he said.”

“I’m happy for you. Really. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“How am I going to get hurt? He’s the first guy I’ve ever met that is interested in something other than just having sex with me. I was just thinking how nice that was when we were sitting down.”

“I’m just saying.” She took a drink of beer. “How’d he afford that huge house? Did he tell you that?”

“He was in the military, and he stayed in Iraq as a private contractor. He said it paid well.”

“Jerry was in the Marines, remember? Do you know what a contractor is?”

“I don’t know. Builds stuff? Rebuilds the country?”

She spit out a laugh. “Contractors are paid by their contracts. They’re hit men. Mercenaries. They kill people for a living.”

“You’re nuts.”

She took a drink of beer with her eyebrows raised, looking right at me the entire time. As she lowered the bottle, she coughed. “Ask him.”

“I will.”

“Where does he work now?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. I had no idea. I felt like making something up, but didn’t dare. Her mouth twisted into a shitty little smirk.

“You don’t know, do you?”

She must have sensed my uncertainty.

I let out a sigh. “No.”

“Bet it’s shady.”

“It’s not shady,” I said adamantly. “And, he’s not shady.”

Despite my claim, my stomach began to feel like I’d just eaten oysters.

Or swallowed perfume.

Either way, I didn’t like it.