Back in college, Mia, Joelle and I were like the three musketeers. That is, if the three musketeers had made their careers out of helping each other out of difficult or embarrassing sexual situations. I don’t know how our little trio managed to find ourselves in so much X-rated trouble, but we did. Constantly. It’s a wonder we actually managed to graduate with all the outrageous sex we had.
As might be expected, I was the least bold of our threesome, and yet I was the one who had to be bailed out the most often. That’s because Joelle didn’t really care about her reputation. If people thought she had a highly tuned libido, well, that was fine with her because it was true. And a reputation as a sex guru seemed to wrangle her even more bedpartners than she might have otherwise lassoed. In fact, this reputation was how she won her nightly spot as DJ on the college indie music station. It was also how she wormed her way backstage when any cute bands visited campus to play for the student body, searching out ‘exclusive interviews’ that often took place between her open, hungry mouth and some bandmember’s lucky cock, with a live microphone nowhere in sight.
Mia was less showy in her exploits than Joelle, but she had a deeply feminist belief that girls should be allowed to do exactly what they pleased. That girls should, in fact, have the same opportunities as boys, in whatever subject they wanted, including sexual relations. Mia was the type to date a professor, or to have a fling while on a yoga retreat, hooking up with one instructor for half the time and another for the rest. She didn’t play favourites and she didn’t play by anyone else’s rules. She was known for her experimentation, and had even spent one solid quarter in the femme role of a girl-girl relationship.
So it was down to me to call on my musketeers for help. I cared what people thought about me. I tried to keep my nose clean. Trouble simply happened to me. Sometimes, though, I didn’t have to call. My two saviours found me first, as if they were wired into my needs. They kept an eye out, helping me before I even knew I needed help. Like the time with West. He was my number-one vice. All tanned and blond and gorgeous. Sweet smile, slightly devilish expression in his steel-blue eyes. He had everything going for him, including a girlfriend in a nearby sorority. Yet he liked me. Even if I was just a fling, he liked to be with me.
I didn’t mind being kept secret from his girlfriend because, after our first tryst together, I decided that I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I wasn’t like the girls out trolling for a husband already, searching for that elusive Mrs degree. I only wanted to have fun. But what wouldn’t have been fun was to be discovered in flagrante delicto by his witchy girlfriend and her sadistic sorority sisters. This is why Joelle and Mia rushed to save me when West’s girlfriend showed up unannounced in the dorm one evening. Mia saw her first, down in the lobby, and went running to Joelle’s room to let her know.
‘Charlie’s with West. In his room. If she doesn’t get out now, Witchwoman will find them both. And the phone must be off the hook. I tried calling –’
Joelle didn’t hesitate for a moment. She ran across the hall to her favourite fuckbuddy’s room, a junior named Carter who was far more interested in partying than studying, and invited him to a private showing in the shower. The fact that she invited him in front of his rowdy group of beer-drinking friends meant that in moments everyone on our floor knew what was happening: girl in the boys’ bathroom. Show on at twelve.
Joelle was a true friend. She showered in the boys’ room in order to take the heat off me, or really to give me time to get dressed and sneak out of West’s bedroom unnoticed. As soon as Mia felt it was safe, she went knocking on West’s door, and when he, opened it a crack, naked save for a pair of blue silky boxers, she explained the situation in hushed tones. I understood immediately what the problem was, and I hurried to dress, trying to find all of my clothes and slip them on to my sweat-dampened skin. We’d been in a sixty-nine in his bottom bunk, with West’s tongue dreamily tracing circles between my thighs. At the point of our disturbance, I had been teetering on the brink of a climax and, even as I hurried to pull myself together, I could still taste his cock in my mouth. I felt confused from the proximity to pleasure, and I fled from the room, my clothes in disarray, my thong balled up in my fist, breathless when I realised that I’d actually made it back to safety. And that’s when Mia and I heard West’s girlfriend, dissing Joelle for being a slut.
Inga’s catty comments could be heard echoing down the hall, which pissed Mia off so much that she grabbed my hot-pink thong from me and stormed back into the room. So I’d escaped. But poor West didn’t. Inga’s shriek of disgust at two a.m. brought half the dorm outside West’s door.
‘Who the fuck is she?’
West’s voice offered a muffled explanation. I could tell he was trying his best to placate her, and that he was embarrassed by all the noise she was making.
‘I don’t think so, West. Try again.’
He must have suggested that the naughty knickers were a set left by his roommate Marco’s lady.
‘Then how did the panties get in your bed?’
‘Geez,’ I whispered to Mia, ‘why’d you have to do that?’
‘ ’Cause she called Joey a slut.’
‘But, you know …’
‘Yeah, I know. She is a slut. But nobody’s allowed to say so except you and me.’
We collapsed back into our room in a fit of giggles. I felt bad – or at least a little bad – for West. But mostly I wished I had some of Mia’s sparkiness or Joey’s nerve.
Now, here I was all over again. Forced to hang my head in shame – or at least do my best to avoid a catfight at the local bar – because of one sizzling day at the beach followed by a fire-hot night against Engine 387 at the local station. And Alden and I hadn’t even ‘gone all the way’, to use an overly quaint expression from high school. At least, we hadn’t yet. Sure, we would have if the alarm hadn’t broken in on our frisky business. But so what?
I didn’t even know if the time spent with Alden was worth all the trouble. Not when Alden and I hadn’t spoken since the gossip began. I wished I could talk to him, but that didn’t seem possible unless he was the one to contact me. So instead I called Mia as soon as I got home. I knew she would be up. Mia does her best work late at night. She’s a journalist with monthly assignments for several national travel magazines. Almost all of her writing occurs after eleven p.m. It’s the only time she says that she can really think. Or really fuck. I hoped I was going to be interrupting the former activity, not the latter.
‘Tell the truth. You’re ready for me to come get you, aren’t you?’ she asked. I could tell from her voice that she was wide awake.
‘You sound like a mom talking to a homesick kid at camp.’
‘And that’s exactly what you are, isn’t it? Homesick. And I’ll bet plenty horny, too. Do you miss Johnny enough yet?’
‘Enough?’ I asked, feeling guilty as I realised he hadn’t been on my mind much since I’d met Alden, and embarrassed because I hadn’t told Mia about what had happened when Johnny met me on my way out of town, or about how the two of us had engaged in phone sex at the public booth.
‘Enough to come back home.’
‘That’s not why I’m calling, Mia.’
‘Then it’s the ghost, isn’t it? You’re scared stiff, and you need a friend to come and perform an exorcism.’
‘I don’t think you exorcise ghosts. I think that’s for evil demons.’
‘Well, have you seen it yet? Are you spooked?’
‘This isn’t about a ghost,’ I insisted. I took a breath and then slowly explained the situation, and over her immediate and buoyant burst of laughter I worked my way up to describing precisely what I wanted from her. ‘I didn’t know it would be like this. Alden’s ex-girlfriend is upset because she thought they were on a break.’
‘Were they?’ Mia asked.
‘He assured me that they were no longer together, but all of her friends are taking her side, of course.’ I left out the part about finding her photo in his room. She’d undoubtedly use that as evidence against me.
‘Did you know about her?’
‘I didn’t think he was off-limits. Now the whole town is talking.’
‘So let them talk. You’re tougher than that, Charlie. You’ve been doing the LA scene for ten years. This can’t begin to compare with that sort of back-stabbing world. There are only a few of them. Smaller than an audience at one of Johnny’s concerts.’
‘But at least in LA you can get lost in the multitude. Now, I can’t show my face anywhere. If I go to the bakery, the girls behind the counter snarl at me. The men at the bar think I’m easy –’
‘Why would they think that?’
‘Because what I did and what they think I did are two completely different things.’
‘What’d you do?’ said Mia, giggling.
‘You and your filthy mind. We had a good time …’
‘So you did do what they think you did.’
‘Stop it! Even if we had slept together, which we didn’t, why does everyone care so much?’ Before she could weigh in with an answer, I continued, the words coming out in a rush. ‘And from the way people talk, I’m learning that everyone in town seems to have slept with everyone else.’
‘Of course they have. Who else would they sleep with? People from Texas? Seattle? New York? Guam? What did you expect, Charlie?’
‘I mean, the bartender made this comment that let me know she’d been with Alden, and that Sheila had been with Noah –’
‘You’re losing me, Charlie. I don’t know these people.’
‘Well, here’s the main point. When someone does something, everybody finds out about it overnight. You can’t hide anything.’
‘Sounds like college,’ Mia said with a sigh.
‘At least then I could just drop whatever class the guy was in and avoid him in the student centre. Now, I really might have to move.’
‘Well, why don’t you?’ she asked, sounding excited. ‘Your room is still ready for you here. I’ll only charge you double what you were paying before.’
‘I want to stay,’ I insisted, holding firm. ‘I just don’t want to wear a scarlet letter on my chest for the rest of my visit.’
‘What letter would it be?’ Mia mused. ‘He’s not married. You didn’t commit adultery. What about a “C” for cheating? It’d also work for Charlie. You might start a whole new trend, like the initials on the purses that everyone had last year –’
I interrupted. ‘I need your help.’
But Mia obviously already knew what I was hoping for because she said, ‘You want me to really give them something else to talk about, don’t you? Like we did back in school.’
‘Precisely. And then the people will forget about my actions and start talking about yours. If I’m the model citizen the whole time, then I might be able to start fresh. All you have to do is tramp your way through the town.’
‘Lovely.’
‘You don’t have to stay long enough for that to bother you. Just a week or so, to let everything smooth over for me. When you go back home, that will cause as much gossip as your being here. I’m sure of it. All I want is a little time to make the situation less raw.’ To further convince her, I told her about the ménage I’d witnessed in action at the bar, and how easily the people were captivated by a brand-new situation.
‘So why do you even need me? Maybe tomorrow everyone will still be talking about the trio you saw tonight and you’ll be ancient history.’
‘I need a diversion bigger than what happened tonight. Something that involves the locals. I can’t count on a scandal happening naturally. Maybe in a month or two, but I don’t want to hide my head in the sand for that long.’
Mia sighed again, but I could tell she was warming up to the concept. She’s always enjoyed acting the part of the tart. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I could definitely use a bit of vacation. What better way to spend it than by going up North to make out with some hunky strangers.’ A pause. ‘They are hunky, right?’
‘Oh, yes. The farmers. The builders. The fishermen. They’re all here. Every male cheesecake archetype you can imagine. And they’re all hot.’
‘And your fling?’
‘Oooh.’
‘And I really do like him.’
‘No problem, Charlie. We’ll definitely give them something to take their minds off of you. I just finished a big deadline this weekend. I’m due for a break. Now, let me see what’s available –’ Mia has all sorts of tricks as a travel writer, and I heard her clicking away on the computer and muttering under her breath. In moments she’d booked a flight for the following day. She gave me all of her information and then said, ‘Meet me in San Francisco, so we can plan.’
In the middle of the night, I awoke to a pounding on my front door.
The ghost, I thought, remembering Mia’s earlier comments.
The pounding continued. Would a ghost knock at the front door?
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was nearly two-thirty. Maybe I’d imagined the noise. I held my breath, staying as quiet as I possibly could, extremely aware that I was all by myself in the middle of nowhere. In LA, I would have been soothed by the endless, oceanlike sounds of traffic rushing by on Neilson Way. Here, the quiet was oddly menacing, and I suddenly missed all the comforting white noise. Had the sound been in my dreams? No, there it was again. The banging was definitely human, not the sort of ruckus a scrounging animal would make. I didn’t know what noise a ghost would make, but I was pretty sure it would involve chains rattling, not fists knocking.
I padded my way slowly to the front door and flicked on the porch light. In its yellow-gold glow I saw Alden standing there, dressed in his fire gear, his face streaked with sweat and smudged with dirt.
I opened the door but didn’t invite him in. I still smarted from the fact that he hadn’t called me since the gossip had begun.
‘It’s late, Alden.’
‘I had to see you.’
‘It’s late,’ I said again. Then I looked him over more carefully. He’d definitely been involved in some sort of major outdoor activity. His pants were dirty and his hands were scratched and raw. When I glanced back into his dark-brown eyes, I saw that they looked troubled, and the cold feelings within me started to thaw.
‘You were out on a call.’
He nodded.
I thought about the sirens I’d heard in The Saloon when Sheila had confronted me. Although I could count on one hand how many times I’d heard sirens since moving to town, I’d reminded myself that the sound generally didn’t mean anything, as Alden had assured me previously. But, from the look on his face now, I guessed these sirens had indicated a different sort of situation than usual. I waited for him to explain, but he didn’t tell me the story. Staring at me, he swallowed hard and then said, ‘Charlie.’ Just my name. Just one time.
After a final moment’s hesitation, I backed up and let him in. Without another word, he picked me up in his strong arms and carried me down the hall to my room. He didn’t turn on the bedroom overhead light, but light from the hallway filtered into the room. On my bedside table were the remnants of the flowers he’d left for me early Sunday morning. The hearty irises still held on to their bloom, but several of the silky orange petals from the California poppies ringed the vase in a circular pattern.
In seconds he undressed me, pulling off my short white nightshirt then tossing it aside. He took in my nakedness by sweeping a hand from my collarbone down to the split between my legs, and then he went on his knees and pressed his face against my naked pussy. I caught my breath as he started to lick me there, his tongue tracing up and down between my pussylips, and then probing between them more forcefully, as if trying to find the very centre of my body.
‘Oh, God, Alden,’ I whispered, my voice hoarse.
He rocked his head back and forth, and the scratchy feeling of his fresh beard brought the pleasure up another notch for me. He was being so gentle with his lips and tongue, yet that unexpected roughness was what took me even higher. I gripped on to his shoulders and sighed, my fingers digging into him through the tough blue fabric of his uniform. I could feel wetness on my skin and looked down to see that his face was tear-streaked, but he didn’t stop, didn’t make any sort of sound at all. He pressed onwards, using his tongue to trick up and down in lazy circles, and then around in spirals that had me breathless in seconds. The sweetness of his tongue on me worked magic through my body. I felt heat swarming up from between my legs and spilling outwards.
Finally, I could take no more, and I pushed him away. He came back forcefully, gripping my waist and holding me to him, as if he’d be the one to let me know when I’d had enough. When I looked down at myself, I could see that dirt from his hands had smeared my thighs. I felt as if I were part of an ancient ritual, as if Alden had marked me as his own. He certainly seemed to know what he wanted.
I didn’t fight this time. I did my best to stay upright, gripping him, crooning nonsense words of encouragement until the orgasm flared through me, electrifying my body. The throbbing waves went on and on, assisted by the continuing lapping of Alden’s tongue, more lightly now, against my swollen bud. And then I felt myself collapsing, and Alden spread me out on the bed, his eyes so different from the way they’d been the day before, lost somehow, his thoughts hidden from me as if he were a stranger.
And maybe he was a stranger.
But he was a stranger I wanted to fuck.
He undressed himself with impatience, as if he couldn’t wait to be free of the clothing. Getting out of his uniform took an effort since he still had on his heavy boots with the laces that ran nearly to his knees. I pushed myself up on one elbow and watched him, waiting for him to tell me what had happened, but he remained locked in that silent world and I found that I couldn’t be the first one to speak.
Then the two of us were on the mattress, joined together amidst my rumpled, still-warm sheets. His tanned face was streaked with dirt and his hair was matted. I saw a scratch on his chin and a deep purple bruise rising on his right cheekbone. I could feel the strength in his body as he moved me to the centre of the bed, and then we just stared into each other’s eyes as he parted my slim thighs and thrust inside of me without speaking at all. It was if he were a coiled spring; all wound up and needing to discharge the tensions of his rough, manly job.
Being filled overwhelmed me. I drew in my breath and held it, then released the air in a whispering hiss through my teeth. I couldn’t believe how good it felt to have him inside of me. The reality of Alden being here, in my room, made all of my worries about my newfound reputation seem nonsensical. He was larger than life, able to protect me against anything, and I felt more than ready to let him.
He pushed up on his arms, gazing down at me as he worked me. In the light from the hallway, I could see the total fatigue in his eyes, a look mixed with a pain and sadness that I wished I had the power to erase. His jaw was held tight, as if he were unable to let go, and, when I glanced at his chest, I saw those scars, etched into his skin like ancient hieroglyphics, symbols that I could never decipher. At least, not without his help.
Alden gripped my arms as he thrust forwards. His fingers held me tightly, and I knew he’d leave marks before he was through. Before we were through. But I could hardly feel his hands. I wanted more, wanted him to crush me, to demolish me, to hold me so tightly that I disappeared inside of him. I wanted to make everything better, to absolve him for something, yet I had no idea what.
As the pleasure built within him, his eyes shut and his face finally began to relax. I stayed with him, watching him, unable to lose myself in the moment because of the intensity of his expression. His cheekbones looked razor-sharp, his jawline like solid rock. I reached up one hand and stroked his forehead, and then traced my fingertips along the lines of his face. He opened his dark-brown eyes and looked at me, and I felt as if we were connected more deeply than by our bodies alone. I felt as if we’d bridged a gap between us, and I wished I could say something that would let him know how close I felt to him. But there were no words. We weren’t at ‘I love you’. We were hardly at ‘I know you’.
And then he was coming, bucking even harder into me until the bed rattled against the old wood wall and the soft downy pillows fell one after the other on to the floor. With each powerful thrust, it was as if he were driving something out of himself. And with each thrust he brought me closer to my own limits, until I ultimately felt myself losing control, a feeling that came with a great deal of relief, as if I were being drawn out into a deep turquoise sea by gently rolling waves. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him down on top of me, my body echoing his powerful thrusts, captured in his same random rhythm.
For the very first time, we were truly locked together, doing exactly what the people in town had assumed we’d already done.