Selling the Drama (4 page)

He laughed and shook his head at that. She
was unbelievable. And intoxicating. He resisted the urge to move
against her hand that was still gripping him. "This is not what
they had in mind."

Her answering laughter was breathy, tickling
his ear, giving him cause to shiver. "Maybe not. But they won't
mind either way. They have very liberal ideas about sex, you know.
Haven't you noticed that about them? Haven't you heard them going
at it? Mum thinks sex is as natural as breathing. She put me on the
pill ages ago, and the sex talk I got from her was all about
tapping into your own sexual needs; getting pleasure from each
other. She made it sound so superb and fantastic, yet it's not
until right now, with you, that I get a hint of what she was
talking about." Her hand began to move slowly along him, a delicate
grip pulling back and forth with expert precision. She had him
pinned, and while he was much bigger and stronger than her, there
was not much will to resist left within him.

Toby gripped the poolside harder, refusing
himself the option of turning around to touch her. "What about your
father? Surely he won't be on board with me tapping into my own
sexual need and getting pleasure from his daughter's body?"

Charlotte nibbled at his ear before
answering. "He goes along with everything Mum does. Anyway, why do
they even have to know? We're here by ourselves all day, every day.
There's a six foot fence surrounding this back yard. No one would
ever see us, both inside the house, and out. And when they are
here, surely we can keep our hands off of each other in front of
them? Come on, we don't have to have sex. We can just fool around.
Don't you want to fool around with me?" That voice of hers, breathy
and girly, yet certain and strong, all at the same time; it was
messing with his head. She was far too sophisticated for him. Shit.
Shit. Bloody shit. Why the fuck not?

Toby pushed himself off the side of the pool
and turned around, his movements so swift Charlotte lost her grip
on him. He reached out for her face and pulled it toward him,
kissing her frantically, pushing his tongue into her mouth, his
hands devouring her skin, so slippery under the water. Hormones
raged within him and while he wanted to get out of the pool and go
and lock himself inside his bedroom, far away from this temptation
and the risk it posed, he was sixteen and horny, with a girl right
in front of him who wanted anything he was willing to give. He was
either incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky, but only time would
tell because in the present moment he couldn't think about anything
except for her skin, the smooth expanse of it, and the way it
glided beneath his fingertips. She wanted him to touch her
everywhere, to put his mouth all over her. Disconnecting himself
from his common sense, he let it all go, and for the first time in
his life, did something just for the hell of it.

Charlotte lay in her bed, the overhead fan
twirling above her doing nothing to alleviate the stickiness from
her body. The air was oppressive, it needed to rain, but for days
now there had been nothing but heavy humidity, with clouds that
threatened but did not follow through. She ran her fingers over her
breasts lightly, teasing herself with her own fingers, thinking
about Toby's mouth, about how he had consumed her in the same place
where her fingers were now trailing. He was lying in the room right
next to her, just beyond the wall.

Her parent's bedroom was upstairs at the
opposite side of the house, the only room on the second floor, a
sort of suite they had set up for themselves with their own
bathroom and a small sitting room with a couch and TV that
Charlotte imagined they watched their porn on. She'd had plenty of
opportunities to go through their room when they weren't home and
over the years she had found all manner of items that had at first
confused her, but more recently, had started to excite her. In any
event, it was two in the morning and they were shuttered far away,
so Charlotte slipped out of bed, removing her underpants as she did
so, softly padding to her door, quietly cracking it open and
stepping out into the hallway.

Their pool interlude this afternoon had
ended rather abruptly, and Charlotte was still confused as to what
had exactly gone wrong. One minute he was all over her, and the
next, he was out of the pool and striding away without even a
backward glance. He had kept himself hidden away until dinner time,
where he had steadfastly ignored her gaze and eaten without saying
very much at all, retreating back into his room in silence at the
conclusion of the meal.

She turned the handle of his bedroom door
gently, easing herself into the room, sliding the lock into place
as she shut it quietly behind her. His fan was blowing overhead and
he had the windows open with the curtains pulled back. His room was
illuminated by the moon, the shadows soft within. Her eyes landed
on the bed where he was sprawled asleep, no covers on top of him,
only a pair of pyjama shorts on. Charlotte stopped by the side of
the bed, her eyes surveying him. He was beautiful, in the way that
young men can be, as they hold on to the remnants of boyhood while
beginning to look like the man they will soon become. Toby had a
vulnerability about him that slipped out when he wasn't trying so
hard to cover everything up. She had intended on coming in here to
wake him, entice him into making out with her some more, to tease
him into wanting sex. Looking at him though, his face so soft in
sleep, she wanted nothing more than to curl up beside him and sleep
against him herself. It was the most curious of feelings, a
sensation within that was entirely foreign to her, and not
necessarily wanted. She did not develop feelings for boys. She made
out with them. Teased them. Mocked them. Made them lust after her.
She did not curl up beside them so she could sleep against their
bodies. Frowning, she backed away from the bed, not at all
comfortable with this odd instinctive reaction to him. Instead of
going back to her own room, she decided she would instead go out
into the moonlight for a swim in the pool. She could do with a
cooling off, for more reasons than one, and if she was quiet
enough, no one would know she was even out there.

Despite her best efforts at getting him to
break, Toby resisted Charlotte over the next few days, to the point
where he began to impress even himself with his level of will
power. Of course, he was becoming intimately acquainted with his
own hand a bit more than he would have liked, but it was the lesser
of two evils, given the possible ramifications that could come from
indulging in the real thing. She appeared to have given up on her
relentless pursuit after five days straight of topless sunbaking
with no further reaction forthcoming from him. She had even put her
underpants back on under those flimsy sundresses she liked to wear.
The days slowly began to be less fraught with sexual tension, and
he found he was able to relax a bit more in her presence, even
going so far as to have a few conversations with her that contained
no sexual innuendo whatsoever.

None of this changed how much he liked her
though. Whether she was flashing her legs open to him or crossing
them demurely, she had him on his knees. There was very little he
thought about that didn't involve Charlotte and the more she
talked, the more he showed up to listen. She was funny and smart,
loved music and books of all sorts. She was an out of this world
gymnast, not that he knew much about the sport, but her trophies
and medals seemed to speak for themselves. She thought he didn't
watch her while she trained, yet she was so focused on what she was
doing that she didn't notice how he couldn't tear his eyes away
from her. The way she would spin in the air, ribbons wrapping
around her body as she flexed and moved with grace and skill. She
was mesmerising and he could not get enough of looking at her.

He got to know some of her friends as they
dropped by the house and found them to be girls he could easily
like, for they were also kind and funny, but with an innocence
about them that was entirely devoid within Charlotte. There was a
promiscuity about her that secretly excited him. He had caught
sight of her one afternoon, while she was lying on the couch in the
family room reading, her hand up her own skirt, blatantly touching
herself as she read. She had no knowledge he was there, he was
certain of it, and that fact alone began to cast her into a
different light for him. He had at first thought she was trying to
wear him down in order to trap him, have some power over him with
her parents. Now he wondered if it was nothing more than blatant
desire. He was here, he was male, and she liked sex. He looked for
the book she had been reading later on, when she was out at the
pool. It was a novel filled with the type of sex he had never even
dared to imagine, and he couldn't help but wonder if she read it
for enjoyment or for education. It was hard to tell with her. He
was sure that if he asked her she would be more than happy to tell
him.

She would read a book like that one day and
then be seen reading a novel by Thomas Hardy or Charles Dickens on
the next. She was a contradiction like no other. She listened to
Pearl Jam and Mozart in the same sitting. She would lie by the pool
with Madame Butterfly screaming out through her earphones, the
words indecipherable to Toby, yet the vision of her lost within the
music so symbolic to him that he couldn't help but want to listen
to it also, to discover what it was within the sounds that she
sought, what she absorbed and took away from the experience. He
found himself becoming slightly obsessed with understanding her, if
such a thing was even possible.

Now that she was content to sit poolside
with her bikini in place, he felt it safe enough to join her again.
They had fallen into a bit of a routine, lying by the pool in the
mornings, having a swim before eating lunch together, going their
separate ways for a few hours before meeting up by the pool again
in the late afternoon. She was non-intrusive with her topics of
conversation. She asked him questions about his former school and
friends, teased him about whether he had left a girlfriend behind
or not, yet stayed firmly away from the subject of his former home
life. The sensitivity of that was not lost on him.

"You can ask me about them, you know. My
parents. I won't freak out." It was a big offer. He wasn't entirely
sure if he really wanted to answer any questions about them, but
for her, he was willing to try. That alone was confusing. This
connection to her he was feeling. It was seamless, as though it had
always existed between them.

Charlotte merely shrugged though and turned
her gaze away. "I don't particularly want to know anything about
them."

He exhaled with relief, glancing down at the
book beside her pool lounger. "What are you reading today?" He
reached down and picked it up, flipping through the pages more for
something to do than to actually look at the contents.

Turning back to him, she smiled widely. "Oh,
you'll like this one. It's called Heaven. It's about a girl who
lives in the mountains in Virginia - it's American - and she finds
out she's got a different father and goes to live with his family
instead of her hillbilly one. She's got this mysterious young uncle
there and they start to have an affair." Charlotte laughed with
delight at Toby's shaking head. "Your face! You crack me up with
your prudent mortification."

"This sounds creepily like that one with the
brother and sister locked in the attic having sex with each other.
My mortification is justified." He tossed the book back down onto
the ground, stretching out on his own lounger to face her.

"It's the same author!" Her face was lit up
with laughter, radiant and glowing with heat and happiness.

Toby felt a fluttering deep inside at the
sight of her. "I didn't see that one coming," he teased.

She poked her tongue out him. "Hey, listen
to this, I have a new album." Sitting up, she reached down for her
Walkman and passed Toby one of the earbuds attached. "You put one
in and I'll have the other. We can listen together." She pressed
play and lay back down, the Walkman resting on the ground beside
them.

Charlotte closed her eyes but Toby kept his
open, watching her listen to the music, the sounds of REM singing
Night Swimming making him think of her, and the way she would sneak
down to the pool every night to swim when everyone else was in bed.
Toby always made a point to watch her from his window to ensure she
didn't come to harm swimming alone at night. If she were to hit her
head or have seizure or something, no one would be able to help
her. It wasn't safe for her to swim alone, but the nightly vision
she presented, swimming naked in the moonlight; it was too ethereal
for him to feel any motivation towards stopping her, so instead he
watched her from the shadows, telling himself it was for her
safety. His eyes settled onto her chest, watching as it rose and
fell with her even breaths, her skin glistening with perspiration
and sunscreen. There was so much to her, so much more just below
the surface. He wanted to know everything, every single thing that
she thought of, dreamed about, hoped for. Pulling the earbud out of
his ear, he reached over with it and placed it into her own ear,
allowing his fingers to linger in her hair for a few seconds. Her
eyes flew open in surprise and he smiled at her, standing up, his
touch leaving her with reluctance.

"It's a great album."

Nodding, she closed her eyes again. Toby
left her side and dived neatly into the pool, staying under the
water for as long as he could, holding his breath until his chest
burned. Yet the image of her skin, the scent of her hair, it
remained with him. He would have to be careful, so much more
careful around her if this friends thing between them was going to
work, because right now, he wanted to be with her in the purest of
ways; not to kiss her or lose himself in her body like he had that
first day by the pool, but to lie beside her holding onto her hand,
listening to the sound of her voice until the sun went down,
immersed within the sheer brilliance that encompassed her
existence. And that was something you most certainly did not do
with your friends.