Make Me (6 page)

‘Let’s say I heard a little bit of it,’ I try, but the stone horror doesn’t leave his face. And then I just go ahead and make it worse – why not! I’ve already fucked my entire life in the ass with a shotgun. Last week I spent seven hours watching
Homes Under the Hammer
. Things couldn’t get much worse. ‘I mean, you were lying right next to me.’

‘I thought you were asleep.’

‘I was. Until you started talking about … vaginas. And then I woke up.’

I really wish I hadn’t used the word ‘vagina’, there. I don’t even know why I did, in truth, because it doesn’t make the whole sentence seem less filthy. If anything it just makes it sound as though I’m simultaneously mocking him and trying to turn him on.

Which, I swear, is not my goal. I swear it’s not. Even in all the places where it is.

‘Oh my God. You heard all of that. You heard … did you hear Tyler saying that stuff? Oh my God, Maisie, I don’t know what you must think, by this point. Look, that stuff in the storage space … that wasn’t my idea. We didn’t plan any of this, or had … you know … conversations about stuff before you got here. It’s just that when you came in, wearing that dress and –’

‘No, no, Bran. It’s cool. It’s OK. I know you didn’t plan any of that. I mean, I came on to you.’

He nods like I’ve just offered him a rope as he slowly sinks into a pit of scorpions and acid. Unfortunately for him, however, said rope has some stuff on the end of it that he’s not going to want – killer bees, maybe.

Thinly veiled accusations, perhaps.

‘And besides … it’s not like you’ve
ever
planned to do anything to me. Right?’ I say, and then I just wait for his expression to tell me the whole tale. Which it does almost immediately. Of course it does.

He’s in a pit of scorpions, acid and killer bees – hiding secrets is the last thing on his mind.

‘Well …’ he says, and I get a flash of memory. Both of them sat on the couch, waiting for me to return from the kitchen. Both of them looking as nonchalant as it’s possible to look, after just having a conversation about maybe doing me. ‘We kind of talked about stuff, before.’

‘I see.’

‘Back in college.’

‘Right.’

‘Just about … you know, how much we liked you.’

‘And maybe how hard you’d double-team me, if you got the chance?’ I venture, but it’s the wrong move. It sounds like I’m offended, and Brandon is certainly offended, and it takes him about half an hour to stop choking on his coffee and answer my increasingly impatient questions.

‘No! No. Mainly Tyler just … I don’t know … suggested how I might go about … seducing you.’

‘Is that what you wanted to do? Seduce me?’

I don’t know why I’m so surprised. He did come all over me the last time we were together … And yet it’s still there – that odd feeling I always had of being stuck behind a line marked friendship. We were just friends, we were friends, all right? Nothing more.

We couldn’t be anything more, because he was gorgeous and I was not. Because Tyler was gorgeous and I was not. God, I’ve always felt like
not
.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, where’s the big deal in that?’ I ask, and as I do I take the seat opposite him. I stop clutching and barely breathing and being shocked, and just relax into whatever this is going to be. The Conversation, I suppose – though I doubt this variation on that theme is present in many dating guides.

Tell your man what your expectations are, and then listen to him divulging his secret horny chats with your other best friend about threesomes.

‘I think you know what the big deal is in that,’ he says, and he’s right. I just heard the big deal about half an hour ago.

‘You mean because a lot of Tyler’s seduction tips are horrendously graphic and extremely lewd? Yeah, I kind of got a clue about that.’

He puts a hand over his eyes. ‘Oh, man. Did you really hear everything?’

‘Like I said, I was a foot from you. And you –’

‘I honestly thought you were asleep.’

‘Or maybe you wanted me to hear.’

‘No. No.’

‘I mean, there was a lot of stuff in that discussion that I kind of need to know.’

He shakes his head behind the hand-mask. Hunches his shoulders to the point where he’s almost disappearing under the table.

‘Like, how much you’d like to fuck me, while Tyler goes down on me,’ I say, but I make my voice as playful as I can for it. I’m almost into singsong by the time he interrupts.

‘No, I really –’

‘Or, maybe some other stuff. About why you and Tyler have a safe word …’ I say, and this time I really am into singsong. It doesn’t seem to make it any easier on him, however – far from it.

His hand snaps down from his face the second I’ve spelled it out for him, and his eyes are wide and wild.

‘We don’t … that’s not –’ he tries, but he can’t seem to manoeuvre around his own high breaths to get the words out. I have to tell him to just take a second, before he can do anything but panic. ‘OK. OK. Maybe we have some kind of safe word. But we don’t do things together, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

I shrug before I’ve even thought about it, though there are other responses simmering away inside me. A faint sense of loss or jealousy maybe, followed by something else I don’t really want to consider.

I believe it’s called: having voyeuristic tendencies.

‘Would it be such a bad thing if you did?’

He shrugs back at me in a way that’s not like a shrug at all. Really it’s more akin to a tensing of his entire body. ‘No.’

‘And is it such a bad thing if you talked about having sex with me?’ I ask, expecting another half-sure agreement. This time, however, he’s a little more … vociferous. He actually stops twisting his hands together, and makes gestures in the air.

‘I just don’t want you to think we’re assholes, OK? We’re not assholes who sit around blabbing about your ass or … doing things to your ass … Christ. I can’t believe he said that.’ He shakes his head, with what looks like just a touch of rue. Yeah, he’s mad at Tyler, all right. But I think he’s also kind of … I don’t know … fond of his behaviour? Pleased that things go that way, even if he sort of wants to resist?

Maybe. Maybe.

‘He does it a lot, huh? Saying things, I mean,’ I offer, and then I wait with bated breath. Truthfully, I’m not sure my breath has been anything but for the last two hours.

‘Yeah. Not as much any more. He used to, back in college.’ He glances up from beneath those impossibly long lashes – maybe to judge how exactly I feel about this. And when I give him nothing but the stupidly eager expression I know is painted on my face, he plunges on. ‘God, he used to drive me up the wall with talk of you. Of the things I should do or say or …’

‘Or what?’

Again, he hesitates. But he at least seems aware of how much his hesitation is bugging me now. Another couple of seconds, and he puts me out of my misery.

‘Or the things we could all do together.’

‘And is that so bad either?’ I say, because really, what else am I supposed to go with? I’m practically drooling as it is. Anything less than approval would look like I’m just pulling nonsense out of my ass.

‘I don’t know. Do you think we’re assholes?’

Lord, he looks so
sad
as he says it. As though that’s a real possibility!

‘I never thought you were assholes,’ I tell him, in this kindly sort of voice that in no way fits how I’m really feeling. Mostly, I just want to scream from the rooftops:
You liked me so much that you had graphic chats about my backside. Halle-fucking-lujah.

But thankfully he kind of side-blinds me again, in a way that stops all embarrassing exclamations dead.

‘So why did you run out on us?’ he asks, after which I can barely think of one little quiet word to say, never mind a bunch of loudly blurted ones. Is that what it looked like to them – that I ran out on them? I mean, I sort of suspected, but even so.

That’s a little grimmer than I want to really deal with.

‘Because … because you’re beautiful and golden and perfect,’ I say, before I’ve even really considered if that’s true. It seems stupid once it’s out there, but I can’t deny – it has a certain raw ring to it. ‘I don’t know … I was scared. Weren’t you scared? You’re scared now, even though I came on to you and I touched you and now I’m the one bringing all of this up.’ I run out of breath around sentence two, and keep going on sheer willpower alone. Even I’m marvelling by the time I get to: ‘Man, I can’t believe I’m bringing all of this up.’

But it sets him at ease, at least. His shoulders go down and those hands stop wringing each other. Then, after a moment of silence that’s not quite comfortable, he cracks a faint smile. He puts his wriggling fingers over mine. ‘I’m glad you did. I feel less weird about it now.’

I wonder just how long he has been feeling weird about it, though of course I don’t say. I’m too busy mulling all of this over and over in my head, until I get to the one thing that sticks out a mile. ‘Do you think Tyler’s gay?’

He goes very still, but it doesn’t seem to be out of shock. ‘What – you mean like he’s using my intense burning desire for you to get at me?’

‘Exactly like that,’ I say, and nod, just for good measure. I’m sure and certain in my weird theories on stuff I know nothing about. Until he throws me again.

‘I think Tyler would fuck a hole in the wall if there was nothing else available. That’s what I think about Tyler.’

I can’t help it – I blurt out a laugh. But in my defence, he started it.

‘But don’t you … I don’t know. Don’t you ever feel like he took advantage of you?’

What can I say? It looks that way to me. Brandon had a little crush and Tyler had a lot of charm at his disposal, and he just talked his friend right into being a horny fucker. Sounds like a good all-round plan, if you ask me.

Even if Brandon doesn’t think so. ‘It’s not like that. It’s not like he ever makes me do stuff.’

I note that he said ‘makes’, present tense, but let it slide. ‘It’s kind of exactly like that.’

‘No. No, it’s not. It’s the illusion of being made to do something. He talks like that and I feel all worked up and like I have no choice but to act, but it’s not that. I have a choice. I can just … pretend that I don’t. I sit there and listen to him going on about you and how you’d look and feel and taste, and then when you come back from the kitchen I’m so horny that it’s easy.’

And now I note that he said ‘kitchen’ in a very specific sort of way.

‘Is that what actually happened?’

He takes a breath and half rolls his eyes, but I can see how nervous the question has made him. His shoulders have tightened again, just a little. And it’s obvious he’s resisting that hand twisting.

‘Of course that’s what actually happened. What? You haven’t really thought all this time that I just spontaneously decided to lift your top up, have you? Come on.’

He’s got a point. At the time I hadn’t really thought about it – I hadn’t really thought about anything, in truth. But now that I step back and consider it, I can see what he means. Brandon was always the one to hang back, to ask nervous questions, to say
don’t, don’t
. He would never have done that sort of stuff without a little cajoling.

And now I can see just who the cajoler was in that scenario.

It’s the guy who walks through the front door a second later, grocery bags in the loop of his big arm. A look on his face like the one he always has – Y
eah, I know what you’ve been talking about. I know what you want, and what you need, and what’s going to happen now. The only question is, what do you want to do about it?

The coffee he brings back is just what I need: strong, thick and barely tasting like coffee at all. I’ve no clue where he got it from but that sucker has so much sugar in it – so much syrup and foam and extra other stuff – that after I’ve finished it I feel like I’ve just been attached to the nearest electrical outlet.

Things get brighter. Clearer. Safer. We even watch a little morning television together, as though we’ve suddenly become the strangest married unit in all of existence. There’s even some breakfast to go with it – from yet another heavenly place that can’t possibly be real – and then a nice hot shower.

Everything is almost totally normal. Apart from the face palming I keep doing each time I go over sections of the conversation I just had. And how naked I feel when I walk out of the bathroom, in just some too big boxer shorts and a humongous T-shirt of Tyler’s. Seriously, this thing hits my knees, and I still find myself squirming around inside of it.

They’re going to see my bare legs. And my bare feet. And probably a bunch of other stuff that I don’t want to think about too hard, as I retake my seat at the makeshift dining room table, in a dining room that doesn’t actually exist. It’s all just one big L-shaped room, really, with a kitchen and a bathroom tucked into the side of it – though I can see how it could be nice. It’s really quite a big place, all open-plan. Sunlight coming in from those immense windows, bare boards just waiting for a bit of sanding and some wax.

The five years of repression and hidden feelings are probably just making the room seem smaller.

‘That nice?’ Tyler says, as innocent as a new lamb in spring. It’s really not his fault that I read the words differently, and end up thinking about the conversation I’ve just had. Or maybe the night before, when he’d said very similar words about something else altogether.

‘The shower? Yeah, it was great.’

Here would be a perfect time to tell them I need to get going. All I have to do is mention something more plausible than dry cleaning: a dog I need to take care of, or some work-related business that requires my attention. Even though I’m a librarian and I don’t have a dog, and most of all:

I don’t want to. I don’t want to.

I just want to hold my breath, and wait to see what Tyler says next.

‘So did you tell Bran you overheard? Or is this the first anyone’s hearing about it?’

OK, I did not expect
that
to be the thing he said next. I honestly didn’t. At the very least I thought he was going to sort of … ease us into further discussion. Maybe ask a question or two about what we’d talked over, in his absence, or offer me some more of those amazing bagels.