Adrian didn’t carry out his threats for several days. I was alright with him ignoring me, and I did the same. Although Madeline, unlike my dad, insisted a few times that we hang out together, nothing came of it, and eventually she gave up. During their short stay here, both mother and son managed to make themselves well-liked. As expected in our tiny town, where dreams came to die, Adrian was a rock star. The girls swooned, and the boys wanted to be his friends.
Except for me. I wasn’t swooning, and I didn’t want to be his friend, either. His words – his threats – still echoed in my brain when the silence of the hours I spent bent over my books became too stifling. I could hardly focus. I didn’t even know why I was studying. I got into college already. It was more a habit than anything else, and a method to make the hours pass in a less dreadful manner.
Dad was smitten with Madeline. He’d always been harsh with me, but I’ve never wished him harm – so I had to be happy for him for finding someone who could endure that claustrophobic town for his sake.
Again and again, I couldn’t understand for the love of all that’s holy how such a good-natured and kind woman could have such a son. She might have married the devil himself before my dad, someone who took advantage of her goodness.
She didn’t see Adrian for the fiend he was. Maybe she’d learned not to scrutinize him much when he came back at night, his clothes smelling of cheap perfume and cigarettes.
I was pretending to read a book when he came knocking one night. I didn’t have a lock on the door – it’s not how we do things in my father’s house – and after ignoring his knocks, he decided to come in without being invited.
“Reading the bible, choir boy?” he whispered and snickered as if there had to be something amusing about someone perusing religious texts.
I scrunched up my nose. “Have you been drinking?” I asked.
He closed the door behind him with a thud.
“Are you fucking mental? Our parents must be already asleep.”
He shrugged and tried to be cute by giving me a sheepish smile. To make things worse, he opened the door and closed it again, this time making sure to do it noiselessly.
“Go to sleep, Adrian,” I said, burying my nose in the book I was supposed to be reading.
As if that were enough for the fiend to make him go away. He plonked himself down on the bed and grabbed my book. He held it with its top down and stared at the upside-down letters, while his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I can’t read a thing. What language is this?”
I seized the book away from him and closed it. “What do you want?”
He was drunk. I could feel it clearly now that he was so close, a smell of cheap beer and something else.
He ignored my question and stretched out on my bed. With his hands behind his back, his t-shirt hiked up, allowing me a peek at a sliver of skin, darker than mine, and a small patch of treasure trail hair.
“Nobody likes you, Jo,” he said all of a sudden while admiring the naked ceiling.
“If you think that’s news, you’re wrong,” I shot back. I couldn’t throw him out of my room without waking up the whole house, so I told myself I’d indulge him for a bit until he decided that he’d be better in his own bed.
“Why?”
“What the hell do you mean, why?”
“For a guy who’s reading the bible every night, you have quite the mouth on you,” he noted out loud.
So that had been a lie. My dad could believe all he wanted that I was still reading the holy book, but I hadn’t done that in a long time. I had a firm conviction that no heaven would accept me, and that hell would be my final destination, most likely because of the dark, unkind thoughts I often had.
“What have they told you about me?” If he wanted to talk, I’d indulge him for a while.
He shrugged and threw me a weird look. “They say you think you’re better than everyone else, though you’re stupid and a fucking virgin. They say,” he added, rolling on one side and getting in my face, “that you’re not even a cocksucker because that’d make you human, and you’re not.”
“Hmm. Compared to what I know, they sound quite articulate. Are you sure you’re not embellishing a few things here and there, brother?” I returned the look. If he thought he could intimidate me… well, that wouldn’t happen. I wasn’t born yesterday.
He snorted and dropped on his back again. “You’re perfect, aren’t you, Jo?” he asked. “It fucking pisses me off.”
“I’m not perfect. If I were, I’d kick you out of my room right now and drag you in front of our parents so they can see for themselves that their favorite son smells of weed and bad coochie.”
I braced myself for the violence that was more likely to come. But he laughed at my dirty accusations, the kind of hysterical laughter that makes you wonder if a person is alright in the head or not.
“What would you even know about coochie, brother?” he teased me.
“Less than you, which is a blessing. Make sure to wear a rubber. The girls now swarming around you might be small-town whores, but they’ve been around the block.”
He laughed some more, changing his position and throwing an arm over his face. “Do you know what’s weird, dear brother?” he finally spoke again.
“What?”
“I don’t feel like fucking either of them. Tonight, I got my dick wet for the first time since I came here, and you know what?”
An unfamiliar jolt sobered me at the sound of those words. No, at their meaning. I had a clear image forming inside my mind of him holding a faceless girl’s head down, pushing her into his crotch, fucking her mouth. It was all of a sudden, all present in my head in stark detail, down to the way his face would look while getting off using a stranger’s mouth like a means to an end.
“I’m sure I don’t want to hear it, but I’m just as sure that you’ll tell me anyway, so spit it out.” My voice was unnaturally calm as I delivered my lines.
“I felt nothing,” he said, spitting each word like a bad tooth. “Her mouth was so wet and cold. I think it was like that because of that stupid bubble gum. I thought I was going to throw up.”
I said nothing for a couple of seconds. Was Adrian too wasted to realize that he was giving me fodder to torment him?
“What did you do?” I deserved an Oscar. I observed him quietly, taking advantage of his hiding his face, unaware that I was checking him out. He was insufferable, but he was handsome. The most handsome guy I’d ever met.
I’d meet better-looking people in college, I told myself. But I knew, even at that moment, that it wasn’t even because he was so attractive. It was because of the impact he had on my life, starting from the moment he’d climbed out of his mom’s car in front of our house.
“Claimed it was something I ate. Left, all that. Jo, do you know that I’ve never had problems getting it up, no matter who got on their knees for me?”
The ambiguous word didn’t fly past me. He was practically telling me that he’d gotten head from both chicks and guys.
“Maybe you overworked your dick,” I supplied the most obvious explanation. “Or maybe you don’t like her as much as you think.”
He laughed, but this time his laughter was harsh and mean. I coiled inside myself like a spring. If he tried anything, I’d kick him in the crotch. Yeah, I was a virgin and a choir boy, the very definition of nasty.
“A blowjob’s just a blowjob. It doesn’t matter who blows me.” He got up brusquely and stared at me again. “I keep thinking of your mouth.”
I pursed my lips instinctively. He was talking bull.
“I couldn’t get it up for her nasty-ass mouth because I kept thinking of your mouth,” he added as if a correction was needed to set his previous words straight.
“Cut it out, Adrian,” I said, my heart in my throat. I could feel it there, like a lump that threatened to cut my breathing off.
“No bullshit,” he said, dropping his gaze to my mouth. “I thought you’d be easy the moment I saw you. Guys like you usually suck me off because they think I’m so fucking pretty.”
My teeth tingled with the rage I felt inside. “You’re mistaken about me.”
He shook his head slowly. “No fucking way. I’m never wrong about cocksuckers.”
I got up from the bed abruptly. I needed to breathe and couldn’t do it while he trapped me in that sinful stare.
“Go to your room,” I ordered, like he was some kid I could tell what to do.
He moved stealthily behind me. Although you should never turn your back on an animal, especially a dangerous one that could take you down in one move, I considered myself brave for not doing so.
Adrian was every bit as wild as I suspected. He grabbed my shoulders and forced me to turn.
Then, he did the one thing I wasn’t expecting him to do.
He kissed me. He covered my mouth with his and pushed his tongue inside, making me choke for a moment.
It took me moments, long moments, to push him away. His tongue was sweet inside my mouth – a shock because I thought it’d be disgusting. And it was also the way he moved it, like he wanted to explore the inside of my mouth, to taste it – I didn’t know what he wanted.
A surge of pleasure short-circuited my brain. It was too much, like sensory overload. My skin prickled, goosebumps rising everywhere. I was aware of so many things at once: the squeeze of his hands on my shoulders, the warmth of his breath on my face, how solid his tongue was inside my mouth, muscular and slippery like an organ designed for penetration.
But I woke up before I regretted my own action. I pushed him away so brutally that he fell on his ass.
I didn’t need a special memo to know I fucked up. Adrian threw me a positively murderous look and jumped to his feet. I doubted he still felt drunk then.
I put my fists up to guard my face as he pounced on me. But he didn’t hit me. Instead, he barreled into me and dragged me to the floor.
Then he grabbed my wrists to pull my hands away from my face. We were both breathing hard and staring at each other.
And our crotches touched. I became aware of it at the same time he did.
His eyes grew wide. And then, his lips stretched in an all-knowing grin. “Seriously? You push me away and you’re this hard from a kiss.”
I could deny it. But I knew it’d only make things worse if I did. So I set my jaw hard and narrowed my eyes. “Get off me,” I warned him.
“Why would I?” He pressed his crotch against mine, bent on breaking my resolve.
Who did he think he was? Who did he think I was? I hadn’t spent so much time regretting and asking for forgiveness for all the sins I hadn’t committed to break in front of him.
My grin had to look downright maniacal. “Because I might tell anyone that your little pecker gets hard for guys, not gals. I bet everyone will turn on you once they hear it.”
He stared at me like he couldn’t believe his ears or eyes. It didn’t last long. He burst into laughter. He leaned over me until his lips were by my ear.
“Do you think you’re the only one experienced in self-loathing, brother?”
tbc
AN: Story's kind of a slow burn... there'll be plenty of sex later.
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