CHAPTER 7

 

 

Three Years Ago, Slightly Before Asher Met Aura

 

Asher: So you say you dated the same guy all throughout college?

Charis: Ayup, sure did.

Asher: So why didn't you get married after you graduated?

Charis: It didn't come up. Look, you want to talk about froo-froo stuff or you want to play? Uh, Ash…

Asher: What?

Charis: You're looking at me funny. Are we playing, or what?

Asher: We're playing. You know, Sloane, you're not like the other girls.

Charis: How so? Aw, now I'm toast. Come on, we're going again. Round four. Ready?

Asher: Mm. How come you dress like that?

Charis: Because I actually think it's better to wear clothes than go around naked and be arrested?

Asher: You know what I mean. That gray thing.

Charis: This cardigan.

Asher: Yeah, the cardigan. How many layers do you need?

Charis: Don't get on my case about my clothes, dude.

Asher: Not me. I'm just pointing out your unique style.

Charis: Uh-huh. And I know a slick talker when I hear one.

Asher: And then there's the fact that you never say anything about guys treating you shitty.

Charis: What do you mean, shitty?

Asher: You know. It's all my sisters talk about. Whatever guy has just done them wrong.

Charis: Oh, right.

Asher: So who's done you wrong in life? Seriously, no joke. Some dude has to have pissed you off.

Charis: Well, yeah—you! I'm trying to cream your studly ass, Asher Norrell, and you keep flapping your lips like a sissy. Now take your death rays!

Asher: They're not death rays, woman.

Charis: They look like death rays and they act like death rays, they contain essence of death ray, so they're totally death rays, but with, I will grant you, all new branding. Hey! What's that for? Hands to yourself, mister. What's wrong with you? You're acting weird.

Asher: Sorry. My hand must have slipped.

Charis: Right, slipped three feet over—foul! I call foul! Oh!

Asher: Oh, what?

Charis: Um. Nothing. So, uh…where were we?

Asher: I have no idea, Sloane. I was innocently tickling you, using an age-old tactic to distract you into defeat. Then you cried foul.

Charis: Right. Foul.

Asher: Maybe it's time to quit.

Charis: Hungry. I'm hungry.

Asher: Mm, me, too.

Charis: That's my phone. I have to take it.

Asher: Okay. Fuck.

Charis: What's that?

Asher: Nothing. Hey, I'm taking off.

Charis: Sounds good. Catch you later.

 

Asher

 

CHARIS TOOK MY DICK WELL in stride.

So to speak.

Her face had gone red, but she cleared her throat and gave me her Big Sister look from under her lashes. I think she's under the impression it makes her look severe.

It doesn't. It makes her look younger than me and fucking darling. Especially with those pink cheeks.

"It's okay, really. It's no big deal. I, uh, gather the sex with Aura was, uh, above average."

Now, when Sloane refers to sex, she always makes it sound like an esoteric activity. Like it's a hypothetical concept for her. Maybe that's why I have the vague idea that she's a virgin.

She's years older than me. Four, as I might have mentioned before. Which makes her 26. I know she had a boyfriend in college, though she doesn't talk about him much, so….I'm probably wrong about her being virginal. But as near as. I'm fairly certain of that.

When I think about it.

Which I don't.

Much.

"I mean," she rushed on, "you're implying the physical stuff was the best part of your relationship together. So your…your encounters…the sexual…sex…must have been unbelievably, outstandingly, supremely incom—comparable."

She was drunk. Maybe drunker than me. It hit me that I hadn't been the only one drowning their sorrows tonight.

But…sorrows? Charis isn't supposed to have sorrows. The very notion that she might have sorrows necessitating drowning ripped me open. Note to self: probe Sloane about her sorrows when we aren't both wasted.

"Well? Am I right, Norrell?" Her tone was almost aggressive.

"Ah, the sexual sex was excellent." I sprawled out low in my seat, discomfited.

Lame answer…but what else was there to say?

Aura had magnificent tits, a wasp waist, mouth-watering hips…and she loved to play bedroom games. Our only problems in bed came when the light was too bright or I wanted to fuck her from behind and she was too self-conscious about her glorious ass.

I stared at the ceiling, thinking about that ass. My cock began to stir.

Then I thought about our last fight. About years of what I could now admit were crappy times punctuated by drugging sex.

It was over.

Deflation. Shrinkage. Shrivel City.

Well, well, well. I thought, pleased. Stage Three, is that you? Maybe for good this time?

Maybe I was finally learning control. Maybe I'd scrounged up some maturity from somewhere. God knows I needed it now that I had nobody to fuck.

Or another option: maybe I was drunker than a skunk.

Charis leaned forward and poured herself another glass of port, then gulped it down in a single swig.

I frowned. "Hey, you should lay off."

"I'm okay," she dismissed. "So. So, so. That's really excellent to know, Asher. I mean, it's excellent that your relationship with Aura was good on that particular front. Front! Get it? Because Aura's front…never mind. Word vomit alert."

I tilted my head. Sloane isn't a drinker, but I've witnessed her in this state a time or three. Some people become unrecognizable. Not her. When she abuses the booze, she merely becomes herself to the power of ten.

So no jumping on tables for her. No declaring undying love for the ceiling tiles. No, she'll just chatter away, occasionally tossing out lame witticisms—like that thing about Aura's front—sometimes going into hysterics at her own jokes. Drunk, she's a giggler.

She wasn't giggling now, though. This wasn't a happy drunk.

She wasn't even smiling.

Nor, for that matter, was I.

I eyed her intently. She'd rested her head against the back of the couch, exposing her throat. Her collar bones were shadowed above her neckline. Some women have pretty collar bones, others are meh. Charis's happen to be damn tempting. Not as nice as Aura's, naturally, I felt obligated to qualify.

But still…nice. Very nice.

Sitting here fixated on Sloane's clavicles, I became aware for the first time in a long time that she wasn't just my biologically female best friend.

She was also a woman.

Remember, Sloane isn't my type at all. Not remotely voluptuous and cuddly. I actually like her face, but technically her nose is too long, her jaw too square, and her hair, as she puts it, flat.

I'm being straight up about Aura. She's my physical ideal. Charis, on the other hand, is five feet eight inches of sticks and angles. She cannot possibly be more opposite to my idea of a sexy shape.

The women I go for know how to maximize their looks with stretchy, form-fitting clothes. Charis dresses like the academic she is. Sexless button-downs are her friend. If you go for the old-fashioned librarian type, there's your girl.

So I shouldn't have been thinking of her as a woman.

A woman who was here, while Aura was not and never would be again.

Never again.

Aura's gone.

I'm finally fucking free to fuck any woman I want.

Which should have warned me.

Instead I thought how easy it would be to lean over and press my lips to the deep hollow at the base of Charis's throat. It kind of killed me that I'd never managed to land that kiss when I was thirteen.

What if…I stopped the thought out of habit.

But somehow not my eyes.

My gaze moved lower. In the dim lighting, I could see the two little bumps of her breasts making faint shadows in the black fabric. They rose and fell with her breaths.

Kind of amazing when you think about it, but I've never fucked a girl with breasts that little. What shape were they? Are we talking tiny buds here, or puffy points? Forward, up, or side tilt?

"Hey, Charis," I said huskily.

She didn't move. "Yes?"

But I didn't know what I'd meant to say, so I shut up. My eyes were still fixed to her chest. Assisted by the booze, my mind was going places it hadn't gone in a long time.

Charis and sex.

Two subjects I tried not to think about together.

She was twenty-six. I was twenty-two. Once upon a time, the age difference had seemed all-important.

Once upon a time, I'd been a kid.

I've come a long way since then.

Remember I told you about that time when Charis rejected me? It didn't just fly over my head like I made it sound. A few tears might have been shed. Picture a romantic little fuck with sweaty hands, planning out his wedding.

Sure, it's funny now. One day I'll tell Sloane about it and we'll laugh together.

But it was a bad blow. It motivated me. I started winning track meets and stepping up the training, bulking up until there was no way anybody could mistake me for a beanpole kid.

Charis Sloane became the last girl to tell this geek "no."

And females lapped it up. I get shit for being cocky about my talents, but there's no other way to put it. Starting around fifteen, I was chased and called and ambushed and stalked. Maybe I should have been above all that, but sorry to disillusion you, nope. I got off on the attention. My tastes migrated away from tomboys and towards stacked sunnybunnies.

That became known as the Age of Cock. I'm not proud of my boywhore behavior in those seed-sowing years, but live and learn.

I learned a fucking lot, too. I learned some girls are sweethearts, some are bitches, but all of them have pussies that beg to be worshiped. I learned the female body is heaven's gift. I learned nothing comes close to the thrill of making a woman come over and over and over again.

And each of those girls I fucked I hoped would turn out to be awesome.

Turns out there was a whole lot of fucking but not a whole lot of awesome. I had some fun relationships but nothing blow-your-mind. Not until Aura. And now that was done.

In all this time, Charis Sloane had been placed firmly in the Do Not Fuck camp.

But now, now…

One of my favorite things to do is to drive my cock between a woman's breasts and finger her nipples at the same time. Charis's breasts are way too small for that maneuver.

Still. Do her nipples harden easily with a light caress, or do they need to be pinched into tight peaks? Or are they shy things that needed coaxing?

My eyes dipped further, down to her thighs. They were smooth and sleek, what I could see of them. Was she wearing panties under that nightshirt? Since she knew I'd be coming over, my guess was, yes, she'd put on underwear. But what if she hadn't…?

Did she groom her pussy?

Was it pretty?

Was she a wet girl?

Yeah.

Fucking Christ. This was happening.

Imagining what lay inside my best friend's pants was happening.

Why the fuck?

Maybe instead of my skull, the liquor had gone straight to my other head. Because I have to say, raunchy thoughts were zinging around like a squash ball in my brain. I literally could not stop them. The Platonic Shutter had lifted from my eyes and it was not reversible.

Awareness of what I was doing should have stopped me cold.

Instead, the air hissed into my lungs and held.

More than anything, I wanted to know what Charis looked like naked. I wanted to know now.

You'd think alcohol would dull your olfactory senses. Not so much. I smelled her there beside me. Fuck. Charis.

I called her Sloane, and Charis, and Char, and anything I felt like at the time. Right now, she was Charis, with her familiar, homey aroma. I knew it like I knew the smell of grass and earth.

I'd missed it these last months.

It smelled wonderful.

"Did you just eat oranges?" I ground out.

She didn't open her eyes. "No. Why?"

"Clean your place with some citrus spray shit?"

She chortled. "Does it look like I've cleaned? Anyway I don't have time. I've been teaching a class and living off of fast food, y'know."

Abruptly, in a single movement, she stood up.

Charis has a graceful way of moving. I've been aware of it before, admired it. Now it disturbed me.

I leaned forward, tracking her movements. Tried to clean up my thoughts, bring them back on track to normal buddy-buddy shit.

"I forgot you were teaching that postmodernism class. How'd that go?" My voice sounded too gravelly, but laid back as usual. I think.

She was fiddling at her desk. "I couldn't sell them on Foucault or Kuhn but they sorta dug Gould. There goes my theory about catchy titles, too. I was sure 'Discipline and Punish' would pique their interest. Instead they were all like, the Panopticon never even got built, this is so lame."

I struggled to focus. I knew she was going for her PhD in one of the most rarefied of (to me) useless subjects—the History and Philosophy of Science—and had taught a new course of her own design this winter quarter. It was her first solo teaching gig, an important step on the road to her doctorate, so a big deal.

"You want to rant about your students?" I offered casually. "Lay it on me."

That sounded good, like I was interested. And most times I did get a kick out of Sloane's rants. When my thoughts weren't straying dangerously afield.

"Nah. I know they don't really care about the course, they're just filling in credits with electives. But hey, I'll probably take you up on the rant offer later this week while I'm grading their papers."

Her muted response seemed strange. Usually the subject of her work has her off and running.

You know how most people have favorite actors and singers? My girl has favorite historians. She honestly can't see why everyone else isn't as wild about them as she is. Once she starts raving on about her idols, the only way I've found to stop her is to challenge her to an epic battle of trivia and then launch a full body tickle attack.

Tickle.

Did she ever get aroused when a man—

Fuck.

"Let's listen to something," she said brightly, tapping keys and adjusting her desktop speakers.

Nope, I decided. It wasn't just me. I wasn't imagining things. Charis's mood was off, too. Not where mine was, obviously, given her choice of music. Personally, I'd have picked something more mellow and mood-setting than the harsh dissonance of Coil.

"This okay?" She sat back down, this time clear across the room on an armchair.

Music is where we clash big time. Our tastes overlap only enough that we don't come to physical blows—usually—but we'd never managed to agree on a live concert.

It's kind of reassuring, in a way. Women tend to bend over backwards to flatter me and my taste. Only my sisters and Charis tell me the truth.

I gave her a thumbs up.

And I leaned back, folded my hands together, and looked at her.

I tried to be analytical. To think of her as my buddy.

But the shutter had lifted and my awareness could not be flipped off. My jeans were old, comfortable, and currently killer tight at the crotch.

That member I'd concluded had reached the third stage of masculine maturity? It was now firmly back in Stage One, out of control. The apartment felt way too warm and stuffy.

I was drunk, but my brain hadn't dulled completely. I knew something was happening here, something important. Hours ago my girlfriend of three fucking years had walked out of my life. And one of my first thoughts had been well, damn. I need a daily screw. Who am I going to fuck now?

My breath came shallowly with this new, disturbing view of myself.

Why had I even come over here tonight? It was late. I should have been at a bar with my bros, ushering in the new Auraless era of my life. I should have been broken up. I should have been the one picking out depressing, discordant tunes.

Instead I'd hightailed it over here, to Charis. The moment she'd opened the door, it was like I'd come home.

Home to Charis Sloane.

Who persisted in seeing herself as some kind of proxy for my elder sisters. She looked about sixteen right now, but still.

Charis, the woman I'd spent more time alone with than—well, than anyone.

Damn it, I'd been a good boy all this time. Since day one I'd been sexually faithful to Aura; I even stopped myself from fantasizing in other directions.

And if my cock happened to stir around someone else—Charis, say—I ignored it. Transferred my focus to where it was appropriate.

Once I was fucking Aura, I forgot about anyone else.

And when I wasn't fucking her? said the devil on my shoulder.

Well, of course there was Charis. Until Aura drove me to prove my loyalty by cutting her out of my life.

And then what did I go and do when I got too damn frustrated with that?

I coughed as the unbelievable answer came to me.

I fucking broke up with my girlfriend and raced over here.

For friendly support, dude.

To get her take on the "ugly" incident.

To catch up.

You were bored.

Yeah, right.

What a load of B.S.

With shaking hands, I filled up my shot glass. Swallowed more. Repeated. Charis sipped her port.

We listened to music in silence. Well, she listened. I sat there while my mind was blown…while I made my acquaintance with one Asher Total Moron Norrell.

My new and revised self.

Charis didn't look in my direction. She looked anywhere but at me.

I watched her chew on her bottom lip. Her mouth wasn't full, wasn't plump; her lips were as narrow as the rest of her. She was skinny, she had the whole geek image going except the glasses, so why was I hard, why did my mouth tingle and my skin feel tight?

I looked away. My world was spinning. Everything looked different. The whole thing was impossible. I couldn't have fucked up that bad.

She knew something was up. She was nervous, maybe made uncomfortable by an intensity she sensed from me. Probably she thought I was shattered. Wrecked.

And I was.

Not by Aura.

No, fuckitall. By this one.

It was Sloane that had me sitting here with visions of her naked, twitching, my cock at ludicrous heights, like it was going to try to come all on its own in my jeans. As if I was sixteen years old again lying with her on the carpet in my folks' house playing Mahjong, smelling her sweet scent, captivated, silently swearing to unload my virginity ASAP so I could be man enough for her.

I'd fucking been in love with her.

Shit. I knew about arousal. I knew about pleasure. I'd forgotten something, though.

Lust. Lust for forbidden fruit was agony.

The last time my dick had been in this degree of pain was freshman year. Charis's grandmother had just died and I'd opted to fly with her to Portland. I couldn't bear to see her miserable, so I stuck to her through the funeral and the reception. At one point I hugged her.

Huge mistake.

At the feel of her hips against me, at the scent of her, I'd forgotten my pre-adolescent days were over, that I was an expert at fucking, that Charis and I were just friends and she was four years older and my tastes had matured…

I forgot it all. My cock started battering against my fly just the way it used to.

For my first crush. The subject of my earliest sexual fantasies. The girl I'd wanted more than anything.

I pulled away just in time, before I picked her up, carried her off and did something really stupid.

And later on I met her family. They called me a nice kid and said they hoped I met a nice girl my age. Charis echoed the sentiment emphatically. She still obviously thought of me as an immature kid. I gave my cock a strict talking-to.

Shortly afterward, I met Aura. I fell on her like a starving man. Because I was starving. My dick had been like stone all week.

For Charis.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

Can a man have a 3.86 GPA and still be a dodo?

She rose, staggered over to me, tripped, and to my shock, practically fell onto my lap. I lifted her and gently set her down next to me. Her waist under my palms felt fiery hot.

It wasn't her skin, it was me. I felt feverish.

I felt like I'd just been fucked over by my own mind. Like I'd pulled a colossal practical joke on myself.

Ha ha. Got you, loser. Thought you were clever, calling her a friend when you never stopped wanting her. Admit it. You were just settling for what you could get. You're still the infatuated boy you were.

I stared at her face as if I could figure things out that way. I honestly couldn't tell you whether she was objectively gorgeous or not, whether her skin had always looked that smooth, whether her neat, pretty mouth really promised nirvana.

I just knew I wanted to slam her up against me. All out of proportion to our heretofore completely, a hundred percent platonic, pure and innocent relationship.

That once I'd opened the floodgates, I couldn't stop thinking about raising her shirt, exposing her breasts, smoothing her hair back, looking at her, having her—

Shittafucktion.

I kept my hands on her simply to keep her at arm's length. But she didn't take the hint. She was wasted. I'd never seen my best friend more wasted.

"Ash," she slurred, rubbing her cheek on the cloth of my tee shirt, putting her scent in my nostrils, no way to ignore it. "There's something important I need to tell you. I've been putting it off, or maybe not exactly putting it off, more like I haven't had the chance with you being incommunicado, but you see, the fact is, I'm getting married."

It was only then, in that stunned moment of pure horror, that I began to sense the true scale of my life's upfuckedness.