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A big pink dildo
STRANGER
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THE WIND off the Atlantic is fierce and salt-thick as I look at my phone. Mia just texted me a picture of her new body wash.
Juniper raspberry fizz.
I laugh.
Stranger: That sounds like a cocktail.
Mia: You can lick it off me later.
Stranger: Deal.
Mia: Smooch.
I tuck my phone into the pocket of my fleece. She does this a lot, sends me pictures of her shoes, flowers, new shit she’s bought, her leafy healthy salads, funny reviews, things fans say, her friend’s babies.
Stuff I’d normally find too boring to bother acknowledging.
But I don’t. I encourage it. She’s following my lead. I started this. Forced her to know the mundanity of my life so she’d start to care about me.
It’s backfired.
She’s turned me into her girlfriend.
Only, I’m not just a girlfriend, because 80% of the time, we are talking about sex. So even when I want to be free of her, her pussy is there in my mind, a magnificent mystery pussy, all wrapped up in this alluring secretive package. A woman who is prim on the outside, and wet hot and filthy on the inside, I just know it. Only I can’t open this package. She’s just there, tempting me, taunting me. Haunting me.
It’s like the moment before a violent explosion. Something will have to give. Soon. We want to fuck each other badly, but we can’t have each other. Not yet.
So instead, we talk about it. All the time.
It’s fucking frustrating. I could just drive down there tomorrow if she’d let me.
But she won’t.
Cold wind slaps at me as I pull open the door of a seedy casino at the ass end of Atlantic City.
The cold doesn’t bother me. An ice bath wouldn’t bother me. I’m always half hard and entirely frustrated these days. Jerking off and cold showers do nothing.
Fuck this.
I want to know how her ass cheeks would feel in my palms, and how her tongue tastes. I want to know how her pussy feels. I want to see the look in her eyes when I push inside her for the first time, hear the sounds she makes when she comes, feel her wiggle when I stick a finger in her ass. I want to hold her in my arms while she sleeps. I want to read with her and write with her and eat with her, shower and hike with her, watch her face change as she laughs.
Mostly, I just want to fuck her. Hard. Several times. Get this obsession with her out of my system.
Sometimes we put on documentaries, or set the TV to the same channel and watch at the same time, a simulation of a real relationship. It’s fun but it’s also stupid. All this time, so small a distance between us. I want more than text messages and a few phone calls. I want to sit on a couch with her head in my lap, watch a movie together in the flesh, a thought that bothers me because that too would be stupid. It would only hurt her once I’m gone.
More than anything, I want to know who wants to kill her. And why.
I ask her about her family, about her friends, about possible enemies, about her fiancé. But according to her, everyone is lovely and she is the worst human to walk the planet just for talking to me.
There is someone worse in her world, make that two someones.
Two killers. But only one of us actually wants her dead.
Which is why I’m here, staring across the bar at the man who she still pretends she wants to marry. Jeremy Dixon. Mia thinks he’s in China. But he isn’t.
He’s here, in Atlantic City, where he comes two to three times a month. I know this because James and I have been playing at Sherlock and Watson, spying on him and everyone else in Mia’s life.
No one could possibly think this casino is anything but a dump. And yet there he is, her baller of a fiancé, sitting at a blackjack table, his hair a mess, gambling away a thousand dollars an hour on a table that appears not to have been cleaned since Michael Jackson was the most famous person in the world.
And by his side? A woman I am certain is a prostitute. He shakes his head at her ruefully, scrubs his hands through his hair, and tosses a few more coins across the table as negligently as if they were useless. Another two hundred dollars down the shitter.
As far as gambling addictions go, his is mild. I’ve seen people toss a hundred grand around like it’s air, but he can’t afford that. Not anymore.
Jer, as she so sweetly calls him, is broke and gambling away his last dimes.
Mia, with her trust fund and paid-in-full townhouse, must look like easy money to him.
I shake my head. He’s a good man. Kind. That’s what she always says. He doesn’t deserve this.
He sure as fuck doesn’t deserve her. Not that I do, but still. I justify the destruction of her relationship with him by telling myself, she’ll be better off alone than with him.
Dixon may or may not be Ender9551. But he could be.
Either way he’s cheating on her.
James and I have been doing this for a while now. I’ve followed Jeremy to three separate casinos. There’s always a woman. He always gets steadily drunker until his eyes are out of focus. He always loses. Eventually the woman will drag his sloppy ass out of here, and he’ll stagger to the elevator.
We’ve watched the others too, looking for a clue. All we find are lies. This family is full of them.
James spent two whole days at the mom’s country club, all decked out in golf clothes, a polo shirt, his hair styled, khaki shorts on. No one pesters a guy in a wheelchair, it’s great cover. I wish I’d thought of it years ago.
He saw Mia’s mom, took a picture of her kissing a man twenty years younger.
I went to see Annie and Greg personally, dressed up in a UPS uniform I bought online. Visited his law office, their house. She looked like what she is, tired and exhausted, though she did manage a quick smile for me when she noticed the package I tried to get her to sign for was for a different address.
Sorry, she said.
Greg... he looked like the kind of guy capable of killing someone, but he seemed like the type who’d do it on his own. There was something about the even, steady look in his eyes. I don’t think he’d hire out his dirty work.
Jeremy though, he does seem like the type to hire a hit.
I watch him gamble for another hour. When he’s so drunk that he spills his drink, I leave the bar, head through the lobby and up to the shitty hotel room I’ll be staying in tonight.
I want to hear her voice.
It’s 9:14 p.m.
She’ll be at her desk like a good worker bee, typing away, probably writing about cum buckets and true love.
I tap my thumb on the name, but at that exact moment, my own phone buzzes. She’s calling me.
“Hey,” I say.
“Stranger?” Her voice is breathless. Maybe she’s not at her desk.
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing right now?”
I take the stairs up three at a time toward the fourth floor. “Nothing fun.”
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s big news.” She’s smiling. I can hear it in her voice. I’ve never known anyone who could smile with just their voice.
I find my face stretching in automatic response. “I’m good.”
“I really think you should take a seat,” she chirps out, and I picture her bouncing on her tiptoes.
“Hit me with it.”
“Okay, get ready. I’m so excited.” She blows out a long stream of air. “I’ve wanted this forever. Ready?”
“Yes.” I stick my key card in the slot.
“Okay, okay. Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “Are you ready?”
“Mia.”
“Okay. I was just selected to be featured by Wet Panty.”
I pause, one foot in the door. “I understand no part of that sentence.”
She laughs. “It’s a blog. A big deal blog. I submitted months ago.”
“A blog called Wet Panty?”
“Their real name is Wet Panty Readers, but everyone just calls them Wet Panty.”
“Everyone.” I picture the President of the United States talking about Wet Panty over cocktails with various heads of state. Oprah on her talk show. “The Queen of England.” I make my voice sound old, breathy and high, mimic a fancy British accent. “Whet pehnti.”
“Yes!” she says, laughing. “Everyone. They’re a big deal. Don’t mock me. This is huge, Stranger! Be happy for me.”
“I am happy for you.” I close the door softly, so she won’t hear and ask questions I don’t want to have to lie to answer. “When will this happen?”
“April.”
“That’s good. So an interview?”
“An interview, and they’re even going to do an excerpt from my latest book.”
“We should celebrate.”
She laughs. I like her laugh. It makes me forget everything else, forget that when James is walking, when she’s safe, I’ll be long gone. “How?”
I think for a minute. “Tell me what you’re wearing.”
“It’s not sexy. At all.”
That makes me smile. “What is it?”
“Leggings and a big chunky sweater.”
That doesn’t seem bad. I picture sliding my palm down the bare, smooth skin of her abdomen under the sweater. “And your panties?”
“You’ve got a thing for panties.”
“I’ve got a thing for your panties.” Let them be the dayglow ones.
“They’re enormous.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
That’s a decent question. I can hardly mention I’ve seen her panty drawer. “Big panties can be hot actually. What color?”
“Black.”
Not neon then. That’s okay. I like that image. Dark panties against her pale skin. “Take the sweater off.”
There’s a pause. This is what she does. She has to pause, think, analyze, get herself all charged up, process the guilt, outweigh it with the excitement I offer. I imagine it’s exactly how she’d be if we were standing at the top of the waterfall I hike to, and I told her to jump in. She’d peer over the edge, think about it, acknowledge the fear, bite her lip, ask some questions... and eventually, after great deliberation, jump.
“I took my bra off a long time ago.”
“So?” I ask.
“So... I’ll be tits out.”
“Perfect. Take off your pants too.”
A long, dramatic inhale. Just like I expected. And then a pause with rustling in the background. “Done.”
My phone pings. James texted.
“Hang on, Mia.”
James: Check it. Greg curbsided a guy in college, sophomore year. The guy lost a bunch of teeth. Greg’s parents paid for a new set, and it was wiped off his record. The judge gave him some community service. A guy like that...
Stranger: Where are you getting this?
James: Old facebook posts. AND get this... Penny, the girlfriend of the brother, the zen decorator−her dad killed her mom in a drunken rage and then killed himself.
I frown, unsure what to make of any of that. It’s a lot to process.
“Stranger? You okay?”
I clear my throat. A guy who’d curbside someone is a guy capable of extreme and inventive violence, but still strikes me as the kind of guy who’d save himself the money and kill Mia himself. “Your big black panties. Take them off too.”
I’m not sure I think anything at all of the revelation about Penny’s dad, except she had shit for a childhood. Where the hell did she go after her parents were dead?
A foster home probably. Hopefully better than the ones I knew.
Mia hums softly. “Are you fully clothed?”
“Yes. That’s how it has to be. Get naked for me, Mia. No panties.”
She whimpers. “Okay.”
I grin. “Now walk to your fridge.”
I walk to the minifridge and open it, stare at the array of bottles. “What do you see?”
“Food mostly. It’s cold, Stranger.”
I imagine hard nipples and sigh. Someday I will fuck her in her fridge, with her face all pressed up against the cheese drawer, her head knocking against a milk jug. I will palm her tits as they bounce in the cold. “Pick out something celebratory. We’re going to have a drink together.”
I pull out a beer, remove the cap, and listen as she opens a bottle of wine, pours a glass.
“This is silly,” she says. “I’m just hanging out naked in my apartment.”
“Then go into your bedroom. Take the wine.”
She swallows so thickly, I can feel it.
“How many vibrators do you have?”
Silence.
“I hear crickets, Mia. Answer the question.”
“Two,” she says, a little squeaky.
“Take a picture. Text it to me.”
“No.”
I raise my brows. Mia rarely says no. She’s a yes person. A giver. In fact, she has a dangerous compulsion against saying no. If the wrong person got a hold of her, they could take serious advantage of her.
Like me.
Or that fuck, Dixon.
“Why not?”
“Please, Stranger. One of them isn’t embarrassing. It’s just a little thing that buzzes. But the other one...”
This will be good. I grin. “Do it.”
“Don’t judge me?”
“Never.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
Another one of her long, slow inhales. “Fine.”
See? For me, she always jumps, eventually. I sip my beer and wait.
“Why do you like embarrassing me so much?”
“It’s funny. And you like it. If you didn’t, you’d ignore me.”
“I want something in return.”
This is new. Mia, the negotiator. “What?”
“I don’t know.”
I shrug. “Think about it. Let me know. Send me the picture.”
“I just did.”
My phone blips a second later, I glance down at the screen. I smile. “Perfect.”
“I didn’t buy it!” she says, high-pitched.
It’s hot pink, and though it’s hard to tell from the photo−it’s not like she laid a ruler down beside it−it appears to be enormous, with thick veins, a broad mushroom tip, and a hefty ballsack at the base.
I laugh. “Have you used it?”
She’s silent.
“That’s a yes.” I take a long sip. “Use it now.”
“Right now?”
“Are you wet?”
“For you?”
“Yes, for me.”
“Always.”
Like that, my dick is hard, straining in my pants. “I want to see.”
“Hang on.”
She does something, muffled noises in the background. I sip my beer and wonder. I doubt she’d send me a photo of her pussy. I haven’t asked. I’ve thought about it so much it’s pathetic. Wondered at the shape of the outer lips, the inner lips, the color. I know she waxes. She’s told me that. And she’s told me she’s a real blond, though not so much down there.
This is like the fucking longest striptease in the history of blue balls. I’ve never had to work so hard for a chick or a hit in my life.
My phone blips again.
And I suck in a long breath. She sent me a picture of her fingers. Index and middle, glistening in low light, covered in pussy.
That’s unexpected. My dick is jealous. “Not bad, Reed.”
“You were hoping I’d send you a picture of down there.”
“No. I knew you wouldn’t.”
“Are you disappointed that it wasn’t something else?” Her voice sounds small.
“Not at all. If you were here, I’d lick your fingers, back you up onto that bed of yours, and fill your cunt with my rampant, swollen, angry, frustrated dick and make you gag on that big pink dildo while you did it.”
She whimpers, all breathy and sweet.
“Now shove that thing in there and pretend it’s me.” I drop down onto the crappy queen-sized bed, take pity on my poor dick and unbutton my way-too-tight-in-the-crotch jeans.
She lets out a soft lady-grunt, and I picture her brows lowered, all intense focus while she tries to work that ridiculous thing into her pussy. I wrap my hand around my cock and wince. It’s painfully hard.
This would be a shitty celebration though if all we did was jerk off. “Who’d you call first when you found out about Wet Panty?”
“You.” Her voice is all breathy. “I’ve wanted this since I started writing. No one else would understand what it means to me.”
“I’m happy for you, Mia.” I wish I could be there with her, actually hold her body, feel the warmth of her skin, breathe her in.
“And honored you thought of me first.” I’m not sure anyone else has ever done that, wanted to share their accomplishments with me. Is this how couples work? Is this what Mia would be like if we were truly together? Wanting nothing more of me than to share the good times and the bad?
“I wish you were here,” she whispers. She’s never actually said those words before.
“Me too.” But it makes me instantly uncomfortable. I’m not that guy. I don’t stay. I ruin things. I kill people. Leave them. I abandon them and break them. I fuck everything up. All I need from Mia is to know she’s safe. “Now get in your bed.”
“Already am.”
“What is your favorite book you’ve written?”
She thinks for a minute. “Maybe my third one.”
“What’s the name?”
She tells me, and I pull it up online and download it.
“What’s your favorite sex scene in the book?”
“The one where he bends her over the dining table.”
That makes me smile. Mia likes it from behind. “Open your kindle to that page. Tell me what percentage to go to.”
“You just bought it?”
“Yes.”
There’s a long pause. “That’s... really sweet of you. Thank you, Stranger.”
“Percentage?”
“Forty-four.”
I scroll through until I get there. “Start reading. I’ll do the guy’s dialogue. You do the rest.”
“Oh my god. This will be so embarrassing.”
“It will be fun. When we’re done, you’ll use that other little vibrator of yours, give yourself an orgasm, and I’ll listen to you come.”
She’s breathing fast now. “And you, what will you do?”
“I’ll jerk off listening to you, I’ll pretend it’s my dick inside you, fucking you.”
She starts to read, a little shaky at first, but pretty soon she’s laughing, and then she stops laughing, and I know she’s really turned on.
By the time we’re done, I know something new. Mia yelps when she comes, a crescendo of panting, rising ah, ah, ahhh, aaaahhh, AAAAHHHH!
“STRANGER?” she whispers, later.
“Yeah.” I lay back on the pillow, close my eyes and pretend we’re together, that I can feel her breath on my neck, her head getting heavier as she drifts to sleep.
“I know what I want from you.”
“What’s that?”
“I want a dick pic.”
I’m almost too tired to laugh, but not quite.
“I do!” she says softly, fading away from me. “I want to see it.”
Her breathing slows, going even and steady.
“Mia?” I say, but there’s no response. She fell asleep on me.
I lie like that for a long time, listening to her sleep. For a while, just for fun, I let myself imagine a world in which I’m a different man. The kind of man who gets to keep people.
I’d keep her. We’d sleep together like this. Maybe buy the land near the farmhouse, build a second house there near James. Write together. Laugh together. Share nights like tonight, celebrate our wins together.
But just as I close my eyes, I remember something. I destroy everything I touch.
I don’t want to destroy Mia.
So at some point, after we find Ender, I’ll go ahead and tell her the truth, leave her life for good.
Hopefully it will come soon, maybe before Thanksgiving. This whole thing is starting to hurt me some place I thought was past feeling.