Cal is sitting on Loretta’s couch, his face in his hands, saying nothing. I rub his back in a circular motion, waiting for him to react. Thus far, he’s weirdly silent. I was expecting him to scream, to strut around the office throwing random shit around, sliding all of Loretta’s knickknacks off the desk before flipping the table entirely, like they do on CW shows.
Before I had opened my mouth, this felt like a giant secret looming over me like a moving crane. I assumed he’d blame me for lying to him and wasting his time. Instead, he burrows his head further into his hands, flexing his left bicep in the process. Did I misread the situation? Is this entire disaster somehow no big deal?
I hear a sort of moan coming from out of Cal’s mouth, but it’s muffled by his hands.
“What was that?” I ask gently.
“I’m going to have to tell her it’s you.”
My throat seizes. He’s referring to Loretta, his bona fide crime boss.
“You don’t have to do that.” There’s a tremor in my voice. Cal groans, and I feel like a soggy pretzel. I hate that I’ve put him in this position.
“Tell me why you did it.” He looks up from his hands and directly into my soul. Without warning, he puts his arm around my right shoulder and squeezes. Every muscle in my body tenses.
“Because Saffron needed someone,” I tell him.
He squeezes me again, this time harder. “Try again. The truth, this time.”
I take a deep breath, and the words spill out uncontrollably.
“Because Loretta banned me from writing, which is the one thing I came here to do, and Jade is using me like a fucking tug-of-war rope and not a human being, and I have no idea who is right and who is wrong—all I know is that I felt powerless—and I wanted to be in control again, so I agreed to write the piece under a pseudonym because I couldn’t get fired for breaking the rules since my sister got blacklisted from her job and has basically no savings and needed my help paying our rent, and our parents are in Dubai and can barely even visit us, but then she got a job anyway, but I had already published the story under C. Bates, so the damage was done, and I wasn’t expecting for the piece to do so well, but it has, and Jade’s talking about giving me a column, only she’s not giving it to me, she’s giving it to C. Bates, and she might take it back if she knew who I really am, and all I want to do in the entire world is write about something meaningful, so I lied to everyone and I lied to you, and I’m just fucking exhausted and sorry.”
I catch my breath, recovering from the words I just puked out into the open.
I didn’t mean to be so honest, it just kind of happened. But I meant what I said: I am tired. All the sneaking around, the deceit, the competition has been slowly killing me. It feels nice to admit that to someone. It feels good to confront the truth out loud.
Cal is staring at me with an intensity I’ve never seen before. It’s as if he skipped lunch and I’m the last packet of Easy Mac in the kitchen. He’s about to devour me whole, I just know it.
“I don’t blame you,” he says. “I get why you did what you did.”
I raise a single eyebrow.
“Yeah?” I respond, a little bit coy. “And why is that?”
Cal inches a little closer to me. I can feel his breath on my left cheek.
“Because you’re just like me. You’re ambitious. You care about getting what you want, no matter the cost.”
He takes his right hand and cups my chin, letting the inside of his thumb trace my lower lip.
“That’s not true,” I say faintly, forgetting what I’m talking about.
“I think it is,” he whispers in my ear then gently bites it, nibbling on the lobe. I let out a quiet moan. “I think you’re up to no good.”
“So you won’t tell anyone?” I ask. Instead of answering, he begins to kiss my neck. His lips linger, sucking slightly on the skin. I close my eyes, taking in how good the tip of his tongue feels against my collarbone. When I open them again, I suddenly fixate on the camera sitting in the corner, pointing down at where we’re seated. Am I going crazy, or is there a tiny, blinking red light coming straight at me from that direction? I could have sworn I turned off all the cameras before Cal got here.
It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
From where the camera sits, it’ll just look like Cal was whispering something into my ear. Just as these thoughts cross my mind, I feel Cal’s right hand begin to wander down my shirt and toward the zipper of my jeans.
“Not here,” I whimper. Cal’s still breathing heavily on my neck. “Not in Loretta’s office. Follow me.”
I take Cal’s hand and lead him to Saffron’s desk, opening the bottom drawer where they keep the beauty closet keys next to all the sex toys people send them. I grab one of those too.
We walk to the other end of the office, keeping our heads down and hidden from the building security cameras. Although, I doubt anyone checks those. Who could be watching? Superman?
We enter the closet. I turn on the light switch, but Cal shakes his head and flips it back off. He immediately grabs me and begins kissing me. My tongue tickles his, like two teenagers grinding at a middle school dance. He pushes me to the floor, tracing his lips down my body with little flowery kisses, unbuttoning the vintage Prada cardigan I’m wearing as a top. He lets out a little groan, pleased to find I’m not wearing a bra underneath. His hands begin to massage my breasts as he sucks gently on my nipples. My body is growing heavier and heavier. I feel something hard brush against my thigh and let out a little giggle.
“What’s so funny?” Cal asks, coming up for air.
Once again, I shush him. “Just keep going.”
He obeys, moving downstream on my torso, kissing every patch of skin his lips can uncover, like he’s on an imperial quest. When he reaches the waistband of my jeans, he struggles with getting the buttons undone.
Is there a sexy way to get a pair of pants off? Let me know if you find one.
When he finally wrestles my jeans past my thighs and pools them at my ankles, I sit up and place my hand over his bulge. But he playfully pushes me away instead.
“I’m good,” he says. “I don’t need it.”
I shrug and lie back down. Cal pulls my thong (which literally has DTF written on it), to one side and slowly slips a single finger in. A small yelp slips out of my mouth.
“You’re so wet.” He grins.
Using his thumb, he rubs me in a circular motion while his index finger ventures inside me, exploring. My chest clenches, and my hands begin to shake. My body involuntarily flexes and contorts, as if Cal is holding an exorcism and I’m about to cry out when suddenly, it all stops.
“Keep going,” I beg.
But Cal is already undoing his pants and pulling down his boxers. He climbs on top of me, using his hand to guide himself inside. I’m tight, but that comes as no surprise; I haven’t had sex since I started my job at Vinyl. Maybe even, now that I think about it, since graduating. To be fair, sleeping in a living room isn’t really conducive to steamy one-night stands.
Cal thrusts himself forward, and my entire spine jolts. I wrap my legs around his middle back, and he pushes in and out of me at lightning speed, pulling me closer and deeper into his body. When I attempt to meet his eyes, they shift away, wandering instead to the shelves of products, surrounding us like Mount Rushmore. As his speed accelerates, I grow tired of the constant prodding and dissociate. My mind flips through memories from the past week like a picture book—my fight with Leila at Bar Pitti, hiding from Jade at Saffron’s desk. Seconds later, Cal growls like a behemoth and collapses on top of me, panting and sticky. He was only inside me for about a total of four minutes. I roll over to one side in an attempt to shake him off.
“Okay.” I turn to face him, resting the side of my face in my palm and my elbow on the ground. “My turn.”
Cal, who is still writhing around on the floor like a sweaty toddler, furrows his brow and unintentionally flexes his pecs.
“What do you mean?” he asks, wiping his forehead. I realize his hand is still covered in his own semen and cringe. Using my right foot, I kick over the crying tissues so he can clean himself up. “I’m done. That was really great.”
“Sure, for you maybe.” I hand him the new vibrator I stole from Saffron’s desk. “But when I have sex, I don’t stop until I finish.”
He stares down at the toy in his hands as if he were holding a dead rat.
“I’ve never used one of these before,” he admits. “I’m not sure what to do with it.”
“That’s okay,” I tell him, grabbing the vibrator back from his hands. “I’ll show you.”
Cal sits upright, naked, legs stretched out in front of him like an observant kindergarten student. I lie back down, propping my upper back up on a few unopened packages. Then, I spread my legs, raise the toy as close it can get to my vagina without actually making contact, and press the power button. The waves of vibration tickle my lips, and my body immediately tenses in anticipation. I slowly lower the tip of the toy to the bottom left side of my clit, pressing it into my body in a rhythmic cycle. The second I make contact, I let out a moan.
“Play with my boobs,” I command. Cal crawls over to me, excited, and starts caressing my breasts. I up the intensity of the vibrations by one degree. My volume immediately grows louder and more intense. Cal responds by grabbing the vibrator out of my hands and taking control of the vibration patterns. Every muscle in my body constricts then, after a beat, relaxes.
“Fuck, that was amazing,” he says, his head popping up from between my legs. “I think I came again. Does that always happen with these things?”
I roll my eyes, wishing Cal would just let me enjoy this moment. For a split second, my world felt worry-free and simple. I want to hold on to that feeling for just a little longer.
“Have you ever seen a woman orgasm before?” I ask.
“I thought I had,” he confesses. “But I guess I not. Unless you count porn?”
All splayed out in the dark of the beauty closet, quivering as if he’s seen a ghost, I’m struck by how innocent Cal appears. Stripped of his clothes and his cocky attitude, he looks less like the man of the hour and more like a little boy. He glances at me with his big, goofy dimpled smile, and I feel empty.
For months, I’ve been starving for even the smallest slice of Cal’s attention. Now, I’ve tasted too much. My stomach hurts.
Cal gets up and shifts toward me. He wraps his arms around me, and my body conforms to his. He spoons me from the left side, and I feel like a bag of skin and bones inside of his marble frame. We tangle our limbs like a marionette and create a single silhouette. My eyelids flutter shut, and I feel his breath grazing the back of my neck, hot and wet, like the fountain in Washington Square Park in mid-July.
“You know this doesn’t mean anything, right?” he whispers into my ear.
Out of my periphery, I watch as a couple of unopened products fall from the top shelf, knocking into the next and the one after that, like a stack of dominoes. The noise is unsettling, and although I’m technically watching the chaos unravel, I’m somehow powerless to get up and stop it.
“I know,” I whisper back.
The samples avalanche onto the ground. I can see an eye shadow palette explode, adding a shimmer to the carpet. It’s a beautiful disaster. One I’m dreading cleaning up.