I’d done some pretty sick shit back when I could hear. I was on top of the world and acted like I owned it, no matter how poor I was, no matter how I felt after Dad took off before my sixth birthday with some blonde bitch he met online, no matter how bad Mom’s hoarding problem got for those three months before he came back. I wouldn’t let anything stop me, even when Brant was furious with me for taking Courtney from him. “Snooze you lose,” I recall telling him in my room before he hurled a PlayStation controller at my head and pounced on me. In the heated struggle, Brant sliced open his arm pretty bad, and a trip to the emergency room earned him twelve stitches and a crescent scar he still has to this day.
He didn’t forgive me for a while. The last time I ever heard his voice, it was in the hallway at school right in front of my locker where he shouted, “I’m sorry I ever looked up to your selfish, coldhearted ass! You’re not my friend! Fuck you, Clayton!”
Not two months after that exchange, I lost my hearing forever.
And Brant’s loving, final words to me would be thereafter locked in my mind. When he saw me next, the only apology I received was in the form of his lips moving, creating words I couldn’t understand. Then I couldn’t even see the lips anymore as they began to blur behind a sheen of my tears.
I blink away the memories, startled to discover how dark it’s gotten. The only light that touches me now is the nearby lamppost. I pull my phone out, the screen blinding me, and type a message to Brant:
ME
We DO have caramel sauce, tho.
Behind the salsa....
back of the fridge
I grin to myself, a chuckle pushing past my lips before I rise from the bench. Hands in my pockets, I stroll into the calm, breezy night, the moon my only guide, and consider what the hell I’m going to do about a certain beautiful Theatre girl.
The water in the shower is just perfect, turned up almost too hot, bathing my skin in its liquid fire. His face is still burned into my brain. His breath touches my skin like we’re still trapped five zillion feet above the stage in that shaky metal basket. I can imagine it so vividly, so I think, why not go for it?
I slide a slippery hand over my breast.
“Oh, God,” I can’t help but moan.
If he were in this shower with me, it’d be as tight a squeeze as standing in that rickety basket. I can see the water soaking his shirt, picturing it in so much detail, it’s like he’s really here with me. The more the water drenches him, the more his firm muscles reveal themselves.
My nipples are so sensitive. I can’t stop moving my hand over them, up and down, then in circles.
“Fuck,” I breathe, quivering.
The water is almost too hot to bear, and so is he. My fingers run lower, tickling down my stomach. I keep myself on edge, anticipating the sensation I want to feel so badly. I deliberately take my time, torturing myself. My fingers are Clayton’s. My touch is Clayton, evilly crawling his fingers down my body too slowly.
“You’re so bad,” I whisper into the water, echoes of my own voice hissing all around me in the white noise of the shower. “You’re so, so bad.”
Then my slippery hand plunges between my legs. No muzzle or hand or gag can possibly hope to snuff out the moan that escapes my trembling lips now.
Clayton Watts is down there working a cruel sort of magic on me.
“Don’t stop,” I beg him.
He doesn’t. My fingers that are his fingers start to move quicker. I sway so badly, I catch a stream of shower water in my gaping mouth. One hand down below, I keep a set of fingers working my increasingly sensitive nipples. I’m so horny I feel sick. My insides are coming undone fast. I know I’m about to come.
Clayton … Clayton wants me to come for him.
“Yes,” I agree, the word turning into a sizzle on my tongue, my face scrunching up in sweet agony. “Yes.”
The impending waves of ecstasy chase up my body as I race over the cliff of orgasm. I lean forward into the wet wall of the shower, face flattened against the tile as I plummet off the edge, my fingers working me into a state of delirium as I moan my release through the steam and the water and the heat.
It’s not often that you can say you feel dirtier after a shower.
I breathe deeply, recovering as I press against the shower wall. I suck in one lungful of air after another, my hands stuck right where they are, half hugging the sensitive parts of my body.
As the thrill of orgasm departs, reality makes a quick replacement of the joy I was chasing, and I realize that I’m all alone. That kiss we shared while we swayed in the air two days ago, it’s already so far gone that I’m having doubts it ever really happened.