13.My mom put towels all over the back seat of the car and then coaxed him to go and sit down. “Do you think you can make it until we get to the house? I’ve got some blankets in the trunk.” she offered, his wet hand slipping from her grip as he slid into the gloom.
“I think I’ll be okay.” he said, barely even looking at her. His eyes continued to be drawn to the gallery a few blocks away. Almost as if Paige knew where he was and still had some hold over him. “Thank you Mrs. Shuck.” he whispered.
“It’s Ms., and don’t worry about it.” she replied, getting in the front seat. I slid in the back next to Jay, trying to ignore how he shivered even with the heat on and refused to look out the windows or at anything in the car. He just stared at his feet and clutched his arms with fingers that looked like they were liable to snap off they were so taut.
“Ryan, take him upstairs and let him borrow some of your clothes, okay? I’ll fix up the guest bedroom.” my mom ordered, dashing to the linen closet. Jay followed me up the stairs slowly, as if every step was an act of rebellion, which, I suppose, it was. He wasn’t supposed to even be here, he was supposed to be with Paige and... I closed my eyes as visions of him giving himself up to Paige for what amounted to nothing overwhelmed me.
The fabric slid over his skin slowly, almost ripped as it dragged with its wetness. What had Paige done? These were sopping wet, almost as if Paige had soaked them for hours in ice water. Jay’s flesh was eggshell white, the veins were a deep cerulean and mauve, there weren’t any goosebumps because I figured that they’d given up searching for heat. The oddest thing was that it wasn’t obvious that Paige had ripped him open just a few weeks ago, if one could trust the little card next to the photographs. Jay shivered and covered himself as the shirt came off, not meeting my eyes. I found a towel and gave it to him.
Rummaged through my closet while he sat on my bed and shivered. Why didn’t I have anything that was long-sleeved?! An oversight that I hadn’t noticed until today. It wasn’t like any of this was going to fit him well anyway. Found a shirt and some pants that my mom had bought for me and I’d never worn. I handed them to him and he pulled the shirt on smoothly, then stood up and pulled his pants off with little to no notice of the fact that I was in the room. Either Paige didn’t let him wear underwear or he didn’t care, anyway, soon he was sort of dry and in dry clothes. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do at this point, my mom was obviously still putting the sheets on the bed...
“He’s gonna find me.” Jay whispered, pulling his legs up to his chest and laying his head down on his knees. “He did before, he will again.”
“I won’t let him.” I found myself saying before I really thought about it. He only looked at me as if I’d just said that I was going to grow up to be a cat. “Really, I won’t.”
My mom came in right about then, her hair mussed, her dress outfit, such as it was, rumpled and somewhat worse for wear. “You can stay here tonight, okay? We’ll talk about what to do tomorrow. I fixed the guest room up for you, if you want something else just ask...the bathroom’s down the hall.” she explained, leading him away.
I stood in my room and watched them go. Just wanted him to feel safe...to be there for me, to be mine.
There was a knock on the frame of my door a few minutes later. I turned from looking out the window to see my mom. Her brow was furrowed in the way that she usually reserved for after she’d run upstairs and cry for no reason about something that I’d done. The way she told me that my grandfather was dead. She was trying to hide her own sadness to take care of my own. Sometimes that was okay, but not this time.“Mom?” I asked, almost getting up from the bed. I’d been sitting there the whole time, just swinging my legs back and forth to try and relieve the boredom. Tried to avoid the seeming glares of every single figure in all the posters in my room.
“He’s sleeping.” she said quietly, then nothing else.
“Isn’t that good?”
She closed her eyes and sighed like I was still a five year old. She had perfected that long after I was five. “Yes Ryan, it is.” Pause again. “I’m willing to let him stay here for a while, we certainly have the room...but I don’t want you taking it as a free excuse to go and bother him all the time. And I certainly don’t want to hear that you’ve been doing anything with him.”
“I won’t Mom.” I said, keeping my most honest and trustworthy face on. The one that got me out of doing so much, like taking the car through the car wash and learning how to pump gas. Somehow I was able to get her to bend to my whims, but never in a way that was in any way satisfactory. It was always by making her so pissed off that she just figured it was one less trouble to deal with it herself than with me.
“And Ryan?” She waited until I looked up at her. “Don’t bother him about Paige unless he brings it up himself.” Accompanied by a warning glare. I stared at my shoes. Did she know something I didn’t?
I waited until she was asleep. She always kept her door open, even when she was changing. This resulted in lots of memories that I really didn’t want to have. I always closed my door, I used to lock it too but she always jumped all over me for that. In fact, if I spent too much time in my room something was wrong with me and there had to be a big discussion where I denied that and she’d yell and act like it was all my fault that I had no real social life.Her breathing pattern quickly descended into snores that I could hear through the door. I opened the door slowly and then snuck out into the hallway, making sure to dodge the one floorboard that liked to squeak at night. It’d never do it during the day, only when I was trying to sneak out. Maybe my mom had a little trap set with it, I didn’t know.
The guest room was down the hall and to the left. The door was open slightly. It couldn’t hurt to open it more, I thought, see if he was okay. So I did, making sure to have my hand on the doorknob so that I could close it quickly if he yelled at me. But he didn’t.
I opened the door fully and looked in. He was sitting up in the bed and staring at the other wall. The moon cast a dim glow, that, along with the street lamps, poked in through the blinds and across his face. He looked at me dully. “You don’t have any cigarettes here, do you?” he asked.
“N..no...I could go get some if you wanted.” I offered. Luckily, I actually was old enough to get them. I didn’t feel like going to some sleazy out of the way place and begging for a pack.
A few minutes later he was in the passenger’s seat of the car and staring out the window at all the flickering lights. I longed to ask him about Paige, but I didn’t want him to start thinking about ways to go back to him. So it was in silence that I drove to the nearest convenience store and let him pick out what he wanted and a lighter. Afterwards he didn’t head to the car but started walking down the street. I followed him, sensing that he might want to talk about something.“Are you okay?” I asked, trying not to look too much like a vulture waiting for him to divulge all his secrets. He lit his cigarette slowly, then took a few drags before looking at me again.
“I’m fine. But I should probably be getting back.” he said.
“Back where, the dorm?” He scowled at me. I backed up a bit.
“Back to Paige.”
“You want to go back to him? He’s abusing you...why did you go back to him anyway?” I demanded before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be talking about Paige.
He inhaled raggedly. “If I tell you you’ll think I’m stupid...not far off the mark, but I’d rather leave someone with some misconceptions about me. I already told your mom all of this.”
“If you’d just tell me! I promise I won’t rush to any snap judgements.” He laughed and sat down on a curb. I sat down next to him. “Please Jay, it’d...”
“Fine...you know I met him two years ago, right?”
“Yeah...in a bar, right?”
“Yeah, Bobby was there too. We were really drunk, basically just trying to see how fucked up we could get without going to the hospital. Then this random guy came up to me, grabbed my face, and said I had a face made for art and that it was a shame that I was wasting it. Paige.”
“Were you and Bobby going out?”
“Sort of...Bobby was going into the business school and it’s not exactly the best place to come out. One of his lesbian friends volunteered to help him pose as straight. I don’t know, it really wouldn’t have worked out between us...still won’t I guess.”
“What happened that night?” I was really really trying not to pry, but it was so hard when he was willing to talk and all my questions looked like they might be answered.
He sighed and covered his eyes. “Bobby and I went with him back to his studio...we were so wasted we didn’t really know what we were doing. It didn’t take much to think about sex. Of course he photographed the whole thing and then got in on the action himself. The next morning I woke up with Bobby and Paige was gone. He’d left about five hundred dollars and a note saying that he’d be at the bar again that night.” The cigarette started to waver in his hand. “At the time, we didn’t really know what to think, it was money for modeling...but it also could have been for the sex. But it was five hundred dollars, and it wasn’t like we had jobs. Of course we went back.”
“I think I would have too.” I said quietly, trying to reassure him. He rolled his eyes.
“I’m sure you would have Ryan. Anyway, so that night he basically ignored Bobby and started working on me, saying that I was the muse he’d been looking for, that it was a crime against art that I wasn’t already modeling...basically a shitload of snappy patter. Then he came out with the thing that made it all worthwhile. If I’d work with him, he’d pay for college.” He put out the stub of his first cigarette and then lit another one. “He had a whole contract made up. I’d spend the summers with him, then the rest of the year I’d go and do whatever the fuck I wanted. He’d pay my tuition and room and board. Of course I took it...I hadn’t been able to get any scholarships, my parents couldn’t pay for me living there much longer. It was a meal ticket. I signed it...Bobby signed as a witness and Paige was happy as fuck.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you went out with him.” I protested.
He laughed. “He wasn’t as strange then as he is now. At first it was just little sessions, clothed stuff, nothing all that noteworthy. I was new to it all, so I thought that everything he was doing was perfect. Then he started with the flattery, the invitations to dinner, excuses to make me stay with him. And since I’d only ever been with Bobby before, I guess I wasn’t cynical enough to see right through him. Of course we fucked, of course I thought that it meant something. And maybe the first time did. But after that he started treating me like I was porcelain. To preserve what I was like I guess...but I don’t know, all I could think was that either I had some disease or he did, he’d pull the gloves out whenever he had to touch me, even if it was only for a second.”
“Did you ask him why?”
“He wouldn’t answer me. He would barely talk to me anymore, except he’d get all paranoid if I wasn’t where I said I was going to be or if I was late. When he’d find me or finally get a hold of me he’d pretend that he was really concerned and thought that I was dead or something. Nothing really that was all that abusive...just guilt-tripping type stuff. So I stopped going out. Bobby...well, Bobby just hung on, because that’s the way he is. Even though Paige hated him, he’d still come over to see me. I don’t know, I guess some of Paige’s little neuroses rubbed off on me, Bobby told me that I would start crying if things weren’t exactly as I left them. Paige didn’t care.
“Finally I just had enough, I told Paige that I didn’t want to see him anymore and I went back to college and Bobby. Paige was nice about it at first, it was around the same time that I was supposed to go back anyway, but then when it became obvious I wasn’t coming back he started calling all the time. Most of the time I could handle it, but after a while it just built up into so much stress that it totally fucked with my ulcer and...”
“But why did you go back?”
“I didn’t read the contract. It was for four years. If I backed out, he’d get all the money that he spent on me back and I didn’t have it. And I couldn’t talk to my parents about it, they thought that I’d won a scholarship. So I went back. I didn’t think I had any choice. I still don’t have any choice, modeling for art classes hardly pays enough to pay Paige back.” He watched the embers of his dying cigarette and sighed.
“Jay...you could hire a lawyer, I’m sure those kind of contracts aren’t...” I put my hand on his back.
He pulled away. “That’s what I tried to do, but it’s all very nice and legal. The one kind of whoring that is.” he whispered.
“I don’t think you’re a whore.” I whispered.
“Well, isn’t that just great?! Because I fucking am...did you think Paige just wanted me to take pictures of when I went back? No, he wanted the rest of it too! And I gave it to him.” He jumped up and screamed at me. “I’m a whore, whether you think it or not. I sold myself for a college education, I fucked Paige for money...what other definition of whore do you have?!”
I stood up and tried to get up in his face but he was just a little bit too tall for that. Grabbed his head and kissed him violently. “I don’t care what you think you are. I love you.” I said quietly. He stared at me for a while, the color leaving his face, then looked at his feet.
“That’s a nice thing to say, but I don’t think I can believe it right now.” he whispered.
“You don’t have to believe it. Just don’t go back to Paige.”
I went to school the next morning groggy and unorganized, pretty much as normal. I didn’t expect to find Jay still at home when I returned. Maybe he’d tell my mom that he had to pick something up at the dorm and just go running back to Paige. Maybe he’d get Bobby to pick him up and take him back. I steeled myself for his inevitable disappearance. I was quieter than usual during class, people I usually exchanged about two words with a day were somewhat surprised when I said nothing to them and just floated along in my little cage of worry.But he was there.
“I thought you’d go.” I said, sitting at the kitchen table and trying to keep myself from jumping for joy. He sat across from me and shrugged.
“There was something here I thought was more important at the moment.” he whispered, leaning over and licking down my nose. I grinned and got up, then knelt by one of the cupboards. He watched with a bemused expression. “What are you looking for?”
I pulled out the can of vanilla frosting. “You said this tasted good with cock. I wanna try it out.” I said as innocently as I could.
“When does your mom usually get back?” he asked, “I think she might have some objections to seeing us fucking on the kitchen floor.”
“Well, she told me this morning she’s not going to be back until six....so until then, you’re mine.”
“And after that I’m hers?”
“Maybe.” I grabbed his shirt and pulled him down to the floor. Grabbed his lips with my own, drowning out any of his protests with my tongue. He started moaning and forcing his hands underneath my shirt, pulling it off and throwing it across the room. I straddled him easily, keeping him flat on the floor between the table and the stove. His breath started to come faster and he made these little whining noises that I could have listened to for hours. And I would have done that too if my cock wasn’t hurting like fuck. Clothes soon were discarded, nudity was all that came between us and supreme fulfillment.
But the frosting was sealed and the foil cover wasn’t coming off easily. Jay wasn’t helping either, he was busy making huge red marks on my neck that couldn’t be explained away by my necklace. Eventually I resorted to punching a hole in it with my teeth and ripping it asunder. I stuck my fingers in it, not sure exactly what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t really the same texture as lube....Jay tugged on my cock and I couldn’t think at all. Finally just smeared some on his, dove down to lick it up...there weren’t any complaints about no condoms now, it was all just lust, pure and simple.
My tongue traced every curve, lingered on any spot that awoke reactions, all the while tasting one of the purest forms of sugar ever concocted. His hands engulfed my head, trying to gently urge me to just deep throat, no more playing around. I teased. Finally he got impatient and just shoved, I let his cock touch the back of my throat and purred. This was not as bad as I thought it was. He came soon after, the sweet and bitter tastes mixing together. I licked my way up to his lips and kissed him deeply, plunging as far into his mouth as I could. He didn’t mind.
His legs crossed around behind me, trying to urge me to fuck him. I couldn’t wait to oblige, but then I heard the jangle of a key in the front door. Instantly we both scrambled for our clothes and tried to have as many of them on as possible before she got to the kitchen.
“Ryan, they didn’t need as many clerks as they thought they would, so they sent me home early.” She came into the kitchen and started a bit when she saw Jay. “Oh, I’m sorry. I keep on forgetting that you’re going to be staying here for a while.” She sat down heavily and sighed. “Do you guys want to go out to eat tonight?” I stared at her and swallowed. The can of frosting had rolled to the middle of the floor. I was waiting for her to notice and either accuse me of snacking on it or realize what we had done. Jay was remarkably calm, like he usually was when caught. It just wasn’t fair. But it appeared that my mom was so tired she was oblivious.
“That would be really nice Mom.” I said, smiling as largely as possible. She smiled back weakly and then went off to change out of her work clothes. I exchanged a brief look with Jay. “Next time we can do that in my room.”