Of course, the bragged-to boy got pretty upset, and before anyone else realized what was going on, they were throwing down right there in the practice hall, screaming, skinny fists swinging, the whole nine yards. The fight ended bloodily when one kid stabbed the other with his bassoon’s curved metal reed piece. It was mostly just a flesh wound, but the kid had to go to the emergency room with the three-hundred-dollar silver-plated bocal sticking out of his chest like a faucet. Luckily the school principal made some phone calls and convinced both boys’ parents to declare the fight an “accident,” and it stayed out of the papers.
I tried to visit the stabbed kid in the hospital afterward, then tried to call him, but he didn’t want to talk to me. Weeks later, he sent me an angsty text in which he called me a “Jezebel” and “spawn of the Devil” and claimed I’d “seduced him into perversion away from the love of Christ.” I had significantly mixed feelings about his message; on the one hand, okay, I probably deserved it, but on the other hand, what? My “seduction” had pretty much amounted to “Hey, ya wanna …?” He’d never seemed the least bit religious when we’d gotten biblical together. And, perversion? Really? I’d remembered it all being vanilla enough to flavor a vat of Dairy Queen soft-serve.
So I sent him a message back expressing my regret over the incident, and reminding him that while Christ would surely turn the other cheek, if he started spreading rumors about me, they’d be pulling another bocal out from betwixt both his. I didn’t hear anything else from him.
Although I kept my own mouth shut about the whole thing, Vicky pretty quickly clued in to what had happened. But instead of grilling me or giving me any repressive lecturing, she just encouraged me to have too many extracurricular activities—convincing me to try out for lacrosse and field hockey, for instance, despite my previous disdain of sports—to have much free time on my hands. More important, she casually handed me a brand-new Hitachi Magic Wand (“I got this in a gift exchange at work, but I already have a back massager, so I thought you might want it”). And that rubbed the edge off, to say the least.
But I’d still developed a certain compulsion about sex that kicks in once I become intimate with a guy. And that leads back to me doing the Bad Idea Grind on Cooper in a flimsy tent in Mother Karen’s yard.
“I’m not sure this qualifies as cuddling,” Cooper whispered. “What’s gotten into you today?”
“Sh,” I whispered back. “Don’t say anything. Don’t move a muscle. And don’t. Make. A. Sound.”
I turned around in his arms and pushed him back onto the sleeping bag. Putting a finger to my lips, I pointed in Pal’s direction; Cooper nodded silently. I eased his pants down to midthigh so his cock bobbed free.
“Great Goddess, I’ve seen heat-addled moose with more self-control than you people!” Pal exclaimed inside my head. “I’m getting the bucket.”
My middle finger doesn’t double as a clit, I thought back to him, irritated. So back off unless something starts smoking in here. And by “back off,” I mean get out of my head and step away from the tent until I’m done.
Pal blew irritated-sounding chords, but I heard him moving across the lawn toward the patio.
I turned my attention back to Cooper. Even if I couldn’t get off, he certainly could. Sometimes it really is just as much fun to give as to receive.
So I lay beside him, my gloved hand hot beneath us, whispering delicious filth in his ear as I worked his long, lean flesh with saliva-slick fingers. To feel him shudder beneath me, watch his face open and vulnerable beneath mine when he finally came … it was beautiful.
When it was over, he blinked, stunned, at the goo splashed across his chest: “Ew, I got some in my beard!”
So much for tender moments.
He snapped his fingers, extended his hand, and commanded, “Nex!” A box of facial tissues materialized on his palm, pilfered via an enchantment he’d set up one night in the Giant Eagle near our old apartment after the manager refused to refund the balance on a demagnetized gift card. It was a petty revenge, perhaps, but certainly handy at times like this. I helped him mop up and then took the spooged tissues out onto the grass to burn