“You are like me.”
“What’s the point of all this BS?”
“What are you talking about?” Allison closed their door.
Dinner in the city was over. Constance was settled in the spare bedroom.
“Life,” he replied and took a seat on the side of the bed. “You. Me.”
“You’re all worked up because of her. She makes you crazy.”
“She has a name, Ally.”
“Mmm.” Allison slipped off her heels, then removed her earrings.
“Is this all you want out of life?”
“Are you drunk, Cal?” She began to laugh — her wild, biting, making-fun-of-him laugh. “I’ve never seen you really drunk.”
Sitting on an edge, staring blankly ahead, the light from the lamp on the nightstand illuminating his profile and parts of their modest room, Cal only saw gray. Or black. Or nothing. Even though he’d started to loosen his necktie, he felt like he was suffocating.
“This is you drunk?” She placed her hands on her hips. “You don’t even let go. Look at you... You become even more introspective. I didn’t think that was actually possible.”
“I’m not drunk.”
Allison rolled her eyes, then went toward the bathroom. Cal stood. But it took effort to make his way to the tiny closet. He could hear the trickle of piss as he hung up his shirt and tie, then the flush and flow of water from the tap as he removed his pants. Undressing seemed to take strength he wasn’t sure he possessed, not after tonight. He completed each task as though preparing for battle.
Living with Ally had been a constant coup d’état.
Never dull, though. He could at least give her that. Never boring and spurred by hate. The hate was their love.
Or was it lust?
Cal loved her because she needed him. Well, she needed to be forced to bend to him. He loved her because she’d chosen him. Because she challenged his scruples. Because she climbed the ladder alongside him and didn’t pass judgment. And it had to be enough. The choosing, the existing.
Had to be.
He’d clung to those ideas for over a year. Apparently, they’d superseded all common sense, diminishing his spirit, his desire to love and be loved — properly. Cal had fallen for an image. A goddess. The sour princess with a privileged mouth — a succulent one, a dirty one — giving him what he thought he no longer required: prestige, connections, blow jobs.
Maybe he was drunk.
“Is this really all you want?” he asked Allison as she entered the bedroom. “To go out and party ... to get drunk?”
“And fuck.” She gave him her backside, holding up the short, dark hair she didn’t really need to lift — it was habit, he supposed — the obsidian hair he wasn’t sure he even liked. The color did accentuate her freckles, spots she usually tried to hide with makeup.
“Is this it?” He lowered her zipper. “Is partying your life away all you’re going to do?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” Facing him, the beige thing slipped off her shoulders and fell to her waist. “I’m going to finish undressing, climb on top of you, and fuck all this bullshit out of you.”
“I’m serious, Allison.”
“That’s the trouble with you, Cal,” she said while hanging her dress in the closet. “You’re always serious.” She stepped back into the room, her breasts jiggling out of her bra cups. “God, now that I’ve met your mother, I can see why.”
“Leave her out of it.”
“You leave her out of it. You’re the one who can’t shake her, and she’s only been here a few fucking hours.” Allison began to laugh. The same insane one as before, only now she managed to do it a little quieter. “I want what I already have.” She moved closer, until she stood inches from his face. “Maybe that’s what you can’t understand. You’re always searching ... for nothing.”
Cal fought the urge he had to give her what she wanted — what they both wanted: to grab her and shove her on the bed, to fuck her so hard the neighbors would complain.
“There’s more.”
“There’s nothing!” she spat as she made her way back to the closet. “There is no God. No pot of gold. No rainbows. There’s only money and pleasure.”
“You sound like your father.”
“Good.” She nodded, turned around, then smirked. “I’d rather be like Daddy than...” Her nostrils flared. “Constance Prescott. What. The. Hell. Happened. To. Her?”
“I think maybe you’re the one who’s drunk.”
“When was the last time she had a really good—?”
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
“Why?” Her eyes danced. Cal wanted to shut her up now more than before. Tie her to the bed, gag her, spank her ass until she begged him to stop. Or until she pleaded for more. “When’s the last time a man gave your mother a fantastic—”
Cal’s hand was over Allison’s lips faster than he could step, and he could step pretty fucking fast. He stepped so fast and so far into her space he made Allison practically nonexistent.
Actually, she was already nonexistent.
“There’s more to life than sex,” he hissed, and her eyes lit up like a crocodile’s in the night, her smirk intensifying, gaining momentum beneath his palm.
Then Cal’s hand dropped. Allison’s fell too, her fingers slipping to the buttons of his boxers.
“Thank God that isn’t true for you,” she said while fondling him, her cleavage rising, then falling, with each breath. “You need sex.”
“Everyone needs sex.” He pushed her hand away, but she only grabbed his dick again, stroking him over the material, jerking him until he became painfully hard.
“No, if your mother needed it, she would have it.”
“That’s different.”
“Why? Because she pretends to be a nun?”
“Not everyone is like you.”
“You are like me.”
Cal snatched her palm, slapped it against the nearby wall, and held it there by her wrist, squeezing. Her pulse quickened. Her reptile-like eyes narrowed to the width of dimes as she made use of her free hand, sliding it inside his boxers. This time, the pressure was much harder, the motion much faster. This time, it was skin on skin.
“You’ll always want me.” Her words matched her rhythm. “You are like me,” she moaned. “Say you’re like me, Cal. Say all you want to do is fuck me.”
Cal yanked a bra cup down and grabbed her breast. “Don’t make another fucking sound.” He bit her neck, squeezing her tit harshly, enjoying the feel of his dick inside her fist more and more and more.
Allison had been right.
She was going to fuck all the bullshit out of him.
Then his mind could finally be free — far from the existential thoughts that had taken hold of him the moment his mother stepped foot off the plane. Allison’s hand and tits absorbed the contemplations, and he allowed it. He wanted nothing more than to be consumed by what he desired.
He did desire this.
Her.
Women.
Pleasure.
He hated when Allison was right.
That was why he took it out on her. Punished her. It was what she wanted too. Why she goaded him. They’d been playing this game since they’d met.
After Cal slipped the other bra cup down, he ran his clean-shaven face over her breasts, placing his teeth over her nipples until she heaved, bit back screams — until he heard her voice in his head, begging him to fuck her any way he pleased...
Fuck me now, Cal. Fuck my ass. God. Please. Anything. I’ll be quiet. I’ll be your good girl.
Allison, always so perfectly pliant once Cal finally indulged her relentless taunts. He would usually yield first, then she would follow. It was beautiful. The acquiescing. He could have her any way he wanted right now. Her pussy, her ass, her mouth. Tied. Bound. Teeth marks. Bruises. He could bend her to his will. He could forget.
He was already forgetting.
He could be anything. He could have everything.
If life was going to fuck him, Cal was going to fuck life back, and right now, he wanted to fuck Allison fucking Crawford.
“Tell me, Cal…” Allison released his dick and looked into his eyes.
Cal was quiet, breathless, but he wasn’t defeated.
“You are like me.” She unclasped her bra, slid the straps off her shoulders, then played with her breasts, thumbing her erect nipples. “And you know it.”
Those words once again found their footing. The reluctance within Cal’s heart caught up with his logic, and he fell back into the recesses of his mind. He stumbled from their game toward the bathroom.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not doing this.”
“What?” She followed. “I’m practically naked. I’m here and I’m real. I’m your pot of gold. I’m right now!”
Cal started to shut the bathroom door in her face, but Allison shoved it open. “What kind of fucked-up hold does she have on you?”
“You’re talking too loud.” He glared at her. “It’s not my mother.”
“It is.” Allison turned and marched toward the bedroom door.
“Where are you going?” He stepped out of the bathroom, watching as she put a hand on the knob. “You’re fucking naked.”
“I have on panties.”
“Put on your robe.”
“No.”
Cal inhaled a sharp breath, but he didn’t make a move.
“This is my house. Besides, she is in bed. And who knows, maybe she would like to see a woman’s naked body. I mean, she would never admit that, but you know everybody likes my tits.”
“Fuck you, Allison,” he growled while stomping toward her. “And fuck your tits.”
“We tried that already, remember?”
Cal put his hand over hers and squeezed. Allison’s eyes lit up like a reptile’s again.
“Let go.” She wriggled her palm. “I want to go to the kitchen and get a drink.”
“Stay … and I will fuck you.”
“Oh ... you will? Too bad. I’ll fuck myself when I come back up. You can watch. I don’t need you to make me come.”
“Do you always have to act like a child?”
“Do you always have to act like an old man? Let go of my hand.”
Cal tightened his grip, put his lips near her ear, and inhaled her arousing, bombastic scent.
“You’re hurting me.” Her red eyes flashed.
“Isn’t that what you want?” Reaching his other palm beneath her hair, he began to pull the strands harshly, communicating hate. Or love. A resounding brutality in his fingertips he was certain would resonate. “And I don’t like your fucking hair.”
“You think you’re so different,” she moaned, placing her free hand on top of his boxers. Scrunching them down, she used her foot to finish pushing the material to his ankles. “But you’re the same.”
Cal yanked her head back, met her eyes, then he pushed on one of her shoulders until her knees hit the floor.
“You’re the same.” She kissed the tip of his dick. “You’re a man.” She began to lick. “You’re just a man.”
Cal looked at the ceiling, eyes wide, stifling a righteous groan.
“I told you I would have you tonight,” she said and swallowed him whole.
Shoving his cock toward her throat, her breasts met his skin — her tits were fucking amazing; they were something everybody liked. Nothing was as perfect as those tits … except perhaps her lips and mouth and tongue. Blowing him was one of the few times Allison seemed feminine.
Maybe it was because she couldn’t speak.
Cal smirked, held on to her short, jet-black hair, using it to keep her face exactly where he wanted it as he listened to her moans. Her lips looked like a slice of heaven pursed around him, his cock the reason her cheeks hollowed out.
Still, even in the middle of it, a slight twinge of shame panged him, the goddamn emotion always seeming to win out.
Maybe he was no different.
He was a man who wanted death and life and indifference sucked out of him. He wanted it to explode out of him.
And then it did.
He trembled, her face in his hands, thrusting so far into the back of her throat she made gagging sounds as he came down it.
Wiping her mouth, Allison stood, smiling. Like an animal, she inhaled the surface of his skin as her fingernails clawed up his chest, his neck, through his hair. She pressed her breasts against him, moaning, pulling at his locks as she slid another hand toward her clit.
“So good you can’t talk, huh?” She fell against the wall.
“I never talk.”
Cal enjoyed watching her touch herself, two fingers inside her underwear, sliding them up and down her slit while she kept her other hand over a breast, stroking a nipple.
Then there was a knock at the door.
“I’m not done,” Allison whispered, almost in a panic.
Something inside Cal clicked. Like a hypnotherapist had snapped their fingers.
“Dammit, Cal, finish me.”
“Cal,” his mother said as she knocked again.
He pulled his shorts up and eyed Allison. “Get dressed.”
“No.” She ceased pleasuring herself.
Using his weight, Cal held her against the wall, slipped two fingers past the elastic of her panties, and shoved them inside her body. “Do this for me now.”
“I don’t feel well,” his mother cried.
“One minute, Mom. I’m dressing.” Cal stared into Allison’s eyes.
“Say it,” Allison panted without hardly any sound.
Finding, then fingering, her G-spot, he watched her eyelids flutter, watched as she bit her lower lip.
“What do you want me to say?” he replied through clenched teeth, but nothing escaped her mouth but quiet puffs of pleasure.
“Mmm…” he continued, his jaw tightening, his tone unforgiving, his digits still pressing and pressing and pressing. “How about, ‘You’re a fucking bitch’? Is that what you want to hear?” Cal slid his fingers out and placed the tips across her lips. Her eyes popped open. “That’s all I have to say to you right now.”
“Fuck you,” Allison snarled, then swiped her bra off the floor and made her way to the closet.
Inhaling a deep breath, Cal waited until Ally disappeared before opening the bedroom door a sliver.
“I’m not feeling well.” Constance rested a hand over her forehead.
Cal swung the door wider. Her face looked pale, like she’d had the flu for days.
“Allison,” he called, “help me so I can get dressed. We’re taking her to the hospital.”
“No,” Constance said, and Allison pranced out, wearing a tiny, sheer bathrobe. Cal didn’t have time to argue. “No, I don’t want to go.”
“I need to throw on clothes. Allison, sit her down.”
“I thought you were dressing.” Sick, but her mouth wasn’t broken. “Don’t put me on the bed.”
Cal glared at Ally, and she did as he said, placing Constance at the foot of the mattress.
“I’m going to get you some water, Mrs. Prescott.” Allison exited the second Cal stepped out of the closet, jeans buttoned, polo on.
“I think we should go to the ER.”
“No.”
“What’s going on?” Cal sat beside her. “Has this happened before?”
“Why is no one in this house dressed?”
“I’m dressed,” he replied, and she scoffed. “We were getting ready for bed.”
Her color had started to return, but something else remained, things he’d noticed since her arrival. She was beginning to change.
“You don’t look right.” He placed his knuckles on her cheek. She flinched. “Can we call your doctor back home?”
“My pills are in my purse. It’s downstairs. I forgot to take them at dinner.”
“When she comes back, I’ll go.”
“Now, Cal.”
“Not until she comes back.”
Their eyes locked, and for a moment the two of them only stared at one another. His mother appeared older than he remembered. She looked away first.
“How are you?” Ally entered the room and handed her a glass of water. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I’m fine,” Mrs. Prescott said as Cal left, certain she was full of proper, ladylike lies. He waited in the hall a moment so he could continue to listen. “I want to go to my own room.”
“Sit down, Mrs. Prescott, please ... wait for Cal.”
“Do you like my son? Do you care for him? Or do you only care for yourself?”
“I love your son.”
“You wouldn’t know love if it slapped you in the face.”
Cal chuckled to himself.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Allison snarled.
“I see what this place has done to him. He’s changed.”
“You don’t know your son.”
Cal had already hit the stairs, having sprinted at the sound of those words. He didn’t want to hear the rest. Fucking bullshit.
Allison did not know him. His mother pretended to know him. People wanted to know him. Even Jocelyn hadn’t really known him.
No one did.
“You don’t look well. I can call my father’s physician. He can come to you,” Allison said as Cal walked into the room several minutes later with the purse and pill bottle. He would find out what the prescription was for later. She would never tell him.
“I’m fine,” Constance repeated. “You both are making too much fuss.”
“You did knock on our door urgently,” Allison replied. “What did you expect?” She stood, running hands through her hair. “Oh, Cal...” Allison looked around the room, probably for her cigarettes. “Constance — I’m sorry, I mean Mrs. Prescott, just finished giving me one of your life lessons while you were gone. They seem to run in the family.”
Cal’s attention remained on his mother. “How long has this been going on, Mom?”
“This is nothing.”
“Does the doctor know?”
Allison went downstairs. His mother swallowed a pill.
“I’m going to fly home with you.”
“I don’t need help. Rosa is there. I don’t need you.”
“I’ll walk you to bed.” He put an arm around her, lifting her weight.
“I’m fine.” She tried to shoo him away, but he wouldn’t budge. “I’m fine.”
* * *
Cal stood at the top of the staircase. His mother’s door was closed. Hopefully she was sleeping.
The feelings took over him again like a bloom of algae in the ocean, Constance’s words repeatedly sounding off inside his head: I don’t need you.
No, she didn’t need him. She’d stopped needing him long ago. Or maybe she’d never needed him, not the way he imagined a mother might innately desire to give and receive affection with her child.
No woman needed him.
A woman’s need for him was always specific and never whole. Never complete. A woman’s need was like a daydream, something that felt good for a moment, deceiving him until reality called.
Perhaps, even now, he was dreaming.
Allison’s silhouette was visible on the porch from where he stood. He had a perfect view of her tiny robe, her lithe body, the tip of her cigarette glowing the way her eyes had in the room earlier.
He must’ve been dreaming.
Because he didn’t know how he’d gotten here: on top of these stairs, in New York City, sharing a bed with an irresistible, delicious, despicable woman.
That woman on the porch didn’t know him.
Nor did he know her.
Not the way two people in love were meant to.
He knew her body, the things she liked. The way she wanted to be touched, and the sounds she made when he did it right. Cal had become acquainted with the smell of her skin and taste of her tongue, especially after she smoked. Her favorite brand of cigarettes clung to her hair and clothes, mixing with her vanilla-scented shampoo and the peppermints she popped like pills. He’d become familiar with the aromas Allison liked as well: coffee brewing, crisp bills, suntan lotion and sweat, the fragrance of their bodies before and after orgasm.
Too bad a rotting stench had begun to usurp whatever pleasantness remained between them. Or maybe there had never been a true sweetness with Ally, or with this apartment, or even with this city. The escape Cal thought he needed from his home state had proven to be no escape — leaving and climbing had only quickened his demise. He’d slipped further from what he knew of himself, and become something else.
He’d become something all right.
He thought he was something.
A boastful king, perhaps. But it was a lie as well.
This was a lie.
Allison was a lie, pretending to love him. And he perpetuated that lie by giving her everything she wanted — everything that now meant nothing to him.
Even the sex meant nothing.
He needed it, though. He had to have it.
She’d been right about that. He was just a man, and he would have women whenever he chose to. He would not feel the shame he felt earlier. He would not feel that shame ever again — the shame he told his mother he didn’t feel. Well, now he truly wouldn’t feel it. Ever.
Cal would only take and fuck, and fuck and take.
If it didn’t mean anything, then it didn’t matter.
It was all necessary, like making money. He needed the money to live. He needed the fuck. This would be his life now. Yes, this was his life: money and fucking, partying and drinking.
He drank now more than ever, and he was starting to lose his shape. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t lean. He had almost given up surfing, except for the occasional ride in the Hamptons. His surfboard was all he had left of California. And the Hamptons were no California.
He missed home. He missed Grandpa E.W. He missed thinking he had a place.
Once Allison entered the apartment, Cal immediately caught her eye from where he stood at the top of the staircase, leaning his elbows over the loft railing.
“Do you want a drink?” she called out.
Of course he wanted a drink.
He made his way downstairs in his dark blue jeans and white polo, thinking he was done surmising and analyzing — thinking he was finally done with life lessons. He walked down the stairs, eyeing her scantily clad body, her obsidian hair, her wild eyes, her amazing tits…
But all Cal could think about was the drink.