“Fuck it!” Corey shouted as he crashed into the greenroom. He was always half deaf after our shows. “We don’t need a fourth guy. We killed it tonight.”
We’d auditioned two replacements for Scott but found no one we could all agree on.
“There’s still that guy from my econ class.” Trey took a swig of water and wiped a towel over his face. “And, uh, What’s-his-face.”
“I want to keep looking.” I collapsed on the scratchy brown couch and stretched my arms along the back. “It’s only been a couple weeks.”
“I’m getting used to splitting the cash three ways,” Corey said. “It’s a nice bump in my income.”
Asha, looking like the unholy love child of Skrillex and an Iron Maiden album cover, pranced her happy ass inside and straight to Trey’s lap. “You guys just missed an entertaining after-show.”
“Thanks for knocking,” I said.
“Nasty.” She recoiled when Trey wrapped his sweaty arms around her waist. “You’re all gross.”
Those two as a couple was difficult to get my head around. He was a buttoned-up take-home-to-daddy type. Asha was...something else.
Corey sank onto the couch beside me. “What happened?”
“One of your groupies got tossed out,” Asha announced, wiping her lipstick from Trey’s cheek. “Some blond chick Hadley was talking to earlier. She was arguing with some guy and threw a drink at him. Bouncer tried to break it up and the guy slugged him. They both got dragged to the door.”
“What does that have to do with us?” I asked.
“She kept shouting that they couldn’t kick her out because she was with the band. I think her name was Stacey?”
“Stephanie?” Trey shot me an accusing look.
“Yep, that’s it.”
Wonderful. Somehow this would become my fault. Like my dick was responsible for the future indiscretions of everyone it came into contact with.
“On that note...” Corey stood up and pulled a fresh shirt out of his bag. “I’m buying the first round.”
“Oh, Corey, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Asha hopped up, briefly scowling at Corey’s post-show stench. “She’s just your type. But I’m warning you now—she hates your music. So, maybe skip over that part of the conversation. And put on some deodorant.”
“Does she have a nice rack?”
Asha smacked his arm, tilting her head back to glare at him. “You’re a pig. I have a class with her, so don’t embarrass me.”
“You’re impossible to embarrass,” I said.
“True. But still. At least don’t hump her leg. And try to make eye contact, okay?”
“Do I do that?” Corey looked between me and Trey. “I’ve never humped a girl’s leg in a bar, right? I’ve clubbed a few over the head and dragged them back to my hut, but I’m not a canine.”
“I regret this already,” Asha groaned as she tugged him out. “I don’t know why I bother.”
* * *
By the time I got our pay from Nate, Hadley was at the bar in the middle of Andre and his friends. Since I had no interest in playing the fifth wheel to Trey and Asha trying to engineer a love connection between Corey and the girl of the week, I hung out at the end of the bar with a glass of Jameson. I was maybe a half hour into tracing patterns in the wood grain of the sticky bar top, half my attention on Hadley laughing among the din of conversation, when Kate slid in beside me.
“You look like shit,” she said, waving down the bartender. “Want another?”
I glanced down at my untouched drink, then back to the empty spot where Hadley no longer stood. Fuck it. I swallowed the mouthful of whiskey and nodded at Troy to pour me a second with Kate’s gin and tonic.
“You sounded good tonight.” Kate turned her back to the bar, pulling the little black straw toward her lips to sip her drink and make sure I watched her do it.
“You don’t care.”
“No, I don’t.”
Kate wasn’t here for the music. Blond hair tied up in a messy bun. Oversized cropped T-shirt hanging just right over her tits. I took a moment to appreciate how the light created a fuzzy outline along the legs of her tight leather pants. Fifteen minutes later, I appreciated the way the material stuck to her pale ass as I peeled the leather to her thighs and bent her over the sink in the greenroom.
Staring at myself in the mirror, my mind was on anything but sex. In my head, I composed a melody that had plagued me recently.
With both hands gripping the sink, Kate was demanding. Harder. Faster. More. I composed the bridge, hearing the chords clearly as she reached her orgasm.
I tried to get there. Grabbing her hips, I slammed into her. Harder. Faster. More. But I couldn’t come. My body wanted it. Every muscle begged for release. When she braced her hand against my leg to tell me to slow down, I gave up and faked it before I slipped out of her and quickly tossed the condom.
I was fucking pathetic.
* * *
That night, like most nights, I dreamt of Hadley.
* * *
I couldn’t get enough of her lips. There was an entire naked landscape of Punky beneath me, but all I wanted to do was feel her mouth on mine. She tasted like sugar and salt, soda and popcorn. Lying in her bed, I was wrapped in the scent of her hair, her skin. It soaked into every part of me.
And she laughed at me.
“What?” I looked down into her eyes, Hadley’s face barely visible in the darkness.
“I can’t help it. You’re funny.”
“Why? Am I not—”
“No.” She wove her fingers through my hair, tugging my face closer to hers. “You’re a good kisser. Are you ready?”
“Are you?”
She nodded with a cute, nervous smile and bit her lip. My dick twitched every time she did that, and this time Hadley noticed, giggling at me.
“You have to stop doing that. You’re killing my ego.”
“Sorry,” she said, sucking her lips together to hold back a laugh.
Balancing my weight on one forearm beside her pillow, I reached between us and held my dick in my right hand, adjusting my position to find her entrance. Her breath caught when I slid the head of my cock through her slit. I froze there, thrilled and terrified about what came next.
“Go ahead,” she said, spreading her legs and placing her hands around my back to urge me forward.
Slowly, I pushed inside her, deliberate and excruciating. I was scared to hurt her and afraid I might buckle under the pressure to restrain myself. She cringed, tensing. My forehead dropped to hers.
“I’m okay. Keep going. Gently.”
Inch by inch.
“Still okay?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Inch by inch.
“I’m—”
Hadley looked into my eyes. It was the sweetest, most vulnerable expression I’d ever seen, and it broke my fucking heart. It seemed barbaric that I had to cause her pain to love her.
“I’m ready.” Her fingers flexed against my back. “Do it.”
I pushed past her barrier and stilled inside her. She clenched around me, squeezing my cock as she adjusted to the pain. Neither of us could take a breath. My arms shook to hold my body in place.
Then Punky let out a long exhale and smiled, bright and mischievous. “That part sucked.”
All the tension drained from my muscles as I kissed her forehead. “Sorry?”
“Yeah. Gah, you should be. That thing’s dangerous.”
“You want to keep going, or should I pack up my toys and go home?”
“Well, we’re already here, so...”
The bliss was short-lived. It was always at that moment that my conscious mind tried to take control of the dream. I knew where this was going, but no matter how hard I fought for a different outcome, the result was the same.
My hips jerked. Sweat slid down my spine. Moving inside her, every muscle clenched for release.
“Hadley,” I panted, “I’m gonna come.”
My fingers went numb and a cold shiver crept up my legs. I came on her stomach because what the fuck, I didn’t know what I was doing and we didn’t have a condom. The relief of climax turned to a sick, black feeling that squeezed my stomach. My chest caved in. No air could reach my lungs. Everywhere my naked skin was exposed felt like acid bubbling on the flesh.
I saw him kneeling over me. Smelled the musty carpet of the foster home. The moment he opened his eyes and looked down at what he’d done, as if it only then occurred to him that he was a monster.
* * *
I woke from the nightmare in a puddle of sweat, the bedsheets tangled around my feet. There wasn’t enough air in the room. I gasped, choking on my own spit, seizing with panic. My right hand firmly gripped my semi-erect cock. On my abdomen, a stream of semen.
Falling out of bed, I scrambled in the dark to my bathroom. With the door shut behind me, I crawled in total darkness to the toilet and poured out my stomach, heaving with violent convulsions. Everything hurt. Even the air from the vent above me was too much stimulation against my flesh. The disgusted, unnerving feeling persisted in agitating every inch of me.
When there was nothing left to throw up, I stumbled into the bathtub and let the spray from the showerhead drown me until the shaking stopped.
During a panic attack, I always had an absolute certainty that I was going to die. I mean, in that moment, with my lungs caving in like two wrinkled, expended balloons, the only thing real was his rough hands on my bare skin and the thought that I was going to die on my bathroom floor with my dick in my hand and semen between my fingers.
Every single time.
Nothing helped. There was no cure that packed the memories of that man away and locked the box. I just kept hoping that if I tried, maybe one day I’d fight my way past it. That surely there had to arrive a day when I could have sex with a woman and come without faking it or shriveling up in a ball. The alternative was too devastating to consider.