twenty-nine
Vivian
We didn’t have an expiration date.
But we did.
I spent weeks in a state of perpetual soreness. I’d never been sore like that, and if someone had told me it was the most pleasurable feeling in the world, I wouldn’t have believed them. But it was. I walked around school gingerly every day and went to his house every night to get sore all over again and started over the next morning.
I found myself in the hallways, carrying a stack of books and stopped dead, looking at some random corner, imagining the flick of his tongue on me, hearing his voice in my ear. Waiting for my phone to buzz.
I can’t wait to get my mouth on your cunt tonight
Is that from Hamlet?
Shakespeare didn’t have enough words to describe how delicious you are
He’d gotten filthier as the weeks wore on, until the words cunt and cock didn’t make me flinch anywhere above the waist.
I got on birth control, and without the extra step, we wound our bodies together even more easily. He was considerately merciless, bringing me to orgasm repeatedly, pounding me insanely with a dick that never got tired or worn out, and keeping me up late talking about the silly nonsense people talk about between kisses.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, a wrapped basket of fruit showed up at the office. Mostly apples. The kids went nuts when he sent a dozen pineapples once. Iris would never have a vitamin C deficiency her entire life with the amount of fruit she ate. Jim and I peeled them in the faculty lounge, and every kid in the school came by the library to have a piece. I thanked him by screaming his name at night, every night.
And the clock wore on.
The days on the calendar didn’t slow down for us.
His workouts got longer, and he came to me sweaty and sore. The smell of him. Testosterone and musk and the leather of a worn-out ball. He was rougher after a workout. More passionate. Less talking. More bending, twisting, grabbing. He growled lower and fucked harder. I couldn’t come enough to satisfy him.
But if I didn’t see him right after a workout, if he dressed and we went out… if he was showered and shaved and ready… he was not just powerful and strong but commanding and purposeful. I trusted him, and even as I took pleasure in that, I called myself a fool. Because I knew what was coming. His workouts weren’t getting harder because he had nowhere to go.
“They look good this year,” Jim said, handing me my crappy black coffee.
I was wiped out, as usual. Sore pussy. Knees a little rubbed from being on them. Overtired. High as a kite. “Yeah.”
“You might have caught yourself a winner.”
“I don’t think I caught anything,” I said. “He’s going to Arizona in a few days.”
“You going to the Freeway Exhibition?”
“Yes.” I rolled the coffee between my palms.
Every year, I looked forward to the game in the middle of the practice season. Every year, my hometown team played the team two hours south on the 5 freeway, and every year, one team creamed the other before they both went off to polish up for Opening Day.
This year, I didn’t look forward to it as much because it wasn’t about me sitting with Dad all summer and screaming at the TV. It wasn’t about sitting in the bleacher seats a few times during the summer. It was about Dash and me and what I could or couldn’t expect from him.
It shouldn’t have been a big deal all things considered. He’d come back.
“Right?” I said in a moment of insecurity before the season-opening dinner. “I mean, you live here. You’re not disappearing into a black void and never coming back.”
I’d been trying to talk about where we were going during the whole car ride and gotten my nerve up way too late.
“I don’t want you to worry about that,” he said, pulling up to the valet.
Guys in white shirts and black jackets opened our doors before I could press him.
He held his arm out for me, and I took it.
The dinner was at Joe Westlake’s place in Pacific Palisades. More money than God. Normally I’d have taken a moment to absorb the riches of the mansion. The view. The gardens. The opulence. But I couldn’t.
“You’ve been avoiding this,” I whispered. “Dash, I can’t. I can’t not know what’s happening.”
“Shortie!” Westlake called. He wore his bow tie and seersucker jacket. Same as always, except now he was just another thing between Dash and me.
Dash shook his hand and introduced me as if I mattered. So I must have.
Right?
I hated feeling like that. Hated the way the gourmet food tasted like plastic. Hated being jealous of all the other girlfriends and wives for knowing what would happen next, what they’d be doing, who they’d be seeing.
I almost wished we’d agreed to part ways when the season started. This felt somehow worse. The not knowing. The insecurity. I hadn’t thought this would feel like a bigger gamble, not because I didn’t have the stomach for him leaving but because he’d already been clear, from the beginning, he didn’t have the stomach for it.
“What’s wrong, sweetapple?” he asked softly in my ear.
What was wrong was three glasses of wine. He drove when we were together, and after I’d told him how my mother died, he stopped taking even a sip when he was behind the wheel. So at Joe Westlake’s house, I had one more than I should have. The nerves kept me from feeling tipsy until it was too late.
The property was a massive expanse of tight little gardens and concrete sections, all set with different chafing dishes from the best restaurants in Los Angeles. Nothing halfway. As usual. Third party like this in three weeks. It wasn’t boring, but all I wanted was to be alone with Dash. I touched him more than I should have, tightening my fingers around whatever part of his body was close, feeling the hardness of his muscles under his jacket, knowing what the force of them could do to my body.
“So you’re the schoolteacher?”
A woman. Raven-black hair and red lips. Black dress. Skin like porcelain and curves that needed a speed limit.
“Librarian.” I let Dash hold me up. He was talking to Gerry Jonson. Lot of numbers. Stats. I’d have kept up if this woman hadn’t assumed I didn’t want to hear it.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, sipping champagne from a flute. “How do you like being his good luck charm? Best thing ever, right?”
“Could be worse?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I must have looked more conversational than incredulous, thanks to the wine, because she smiled comfortably and rolled her eyes.
“I know, right? The life.” She winked.
I smiled, but my chest cratered, opening from the center out, sand pouring in from the edges, wider and wider as the evening wore on until I thought I’d fall into it.
I was pretty sober by the time we got in the car. His hand rested on the gearshift, and I placed my hand over it.
“In a few days, you’re going,” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
“I know this was a hard limit for you. Maintaining this over the season.”
“Maintaining?” he snapped. “What’s that mean?”
Maybe the alcohol drain had left me vulnerable, or maybe the weight of all my denials had dropped on my shoulders, but I felt as if I’d been slapped. I had a ball of gunk to swallow, and I had to take my hand off his before he noticed it was shaking.
And of course.
Of course, of course.
That was the moment I realized I was in love with him.