Selling the Drama (7 page)

"What sex stories?"

"The one's like this?" He turned to her,
feeling bold, a book held up in his hand. "What draws you to
them?"

She crossed the room and shut her door. He
tensed. What had he just gotten himself into? Approaching him, she
took the book from his hand, running her finger over the title on
the cover. "Beauty's Release." She read the title to him, as though
he may not have read it just moments before himself.

"Anne Rice, the author of The Vampire
Chronicles, wrote this under a different name to preserve her
identity at the time. She wasn't ashamed of having written these
books, rather wanted to keep them separate from her others, lest
people judge her based on factors they don't understand. This is
not just a sex story. It's an erotic fairy-tale. It's filled with
all sorts of things, sex performed in so many ways, both
heterosexual and homosexual. It contains acts that are so extreme
they stretch your imagination. I read it, and others like it,
because they make me feel alive. Sensual. And hot. It's not just
about the sex, it's more than that. It's the words and how they're
strung together to give you this visual that you actually feel.
This book in particular is as much about the mental as the
physical. It's about how people feel about sex and different types
of sex and it taps into something deep within a person, a place
where many people might not want to go within themselves and their
own sexuality."

Charlotte took a hold of Toby's hand and
pulled him toward the bed, patting the mattress beside her. He sat,
leaving a small space between them. She flipped through the book,
scanning and searching until she seemed to find what she was
looking for. Her voice as she started to read was soft, slightly
husky, and even toned.

He listened to the words she was reading,
but did not process all of them, concentrating instead on the sound
of her voice and the soft blush that had appeared on her cheeks. He
let his gaze wander, taking note of the way her dress was pulled
tight across her chest. As he watched her, the rate of her
breathing seemed to accelerate, and the blush staining her cheeks
moved down over her neck. Her voice lowered, her breaths hitching
every so often, and she shifted slightly, as though something was
now making her unable to sit still. Toby tuned into the words
slipping out of her mouth and became aware of the nature of them,
and he realised he was witnessing the very reason why she read
these books. Instead of telling him, she was showing him. He
thought about the chart on her wall, her commitment to abstaining
from sex. For him. Because she thought that was what he wanted from
her. He thought about the gifts she had just given him, a cassette
that had been difficult to get and an antique book about a tragic
love story that had touched her enough to make her want him to read
it also. He thought about her, about the contradiction of her, and
he knew that he would never come across another girl like her, and
for that reason alone, she made the risk of being with her worth
it. Maybe there was a way to have everything you wanted.

If you were very careful.

With no further thought he placed his hand
on her thigh. She paused.

"Keep reading." Moving closer to her, she
continued on. He dropped his other hand onto her shoulder and sat
still, listening to her, feeling the warmth of her beneath his
hands. As she continued to read, words that conjured up an image so
vivid, he moved his hand along her thigh, up under her dress,
resting it in the place where her hip began. He moved his other
hand down from her shoulder, pulling the strap of her dress along
with it, replacing the fabric with his hand, his fingertips tracing
along her skin, brushing over another piercing, one he didn't know
she even had. He placed a soft kiss onto her shoulder, whispering
into her ear, "Keep reading." With his other hand, he teased the
waistband of her underpants, skimming his fingers along the elastic
until he slipped one inside, touching her where the book was making
her hot. He added another finger and pressed his lips to her neck.
She stopped reading, placing the book onto the bedside table.

"Do you understand now?" Her voice was
shaking, her breathing laboured. "Why I read them?"

He nodded against her skin. "Yes."

"Would Anne let you do this to her?"

He shook his head. "No." He didn't want to
think about Anne and what she wouldn't let him do.

"Do you wish she would?"

He licked the side of her neck, shaking his
head again. "No."

"Would you like me to read to you again
sometime?"

He nibbled on her ear, his fingers plunging
deeper inside of her. "Yes."

"Nobody needs to know that we do this, Toby.
It can stay between us. Something just for us."

His only response was to trail his mouth
down to her chest, to take that piercing and what it was attached
to into his mouth, his tongue twirling around it, a fantasy made
real. She slipped her fingers into his hair, resting her face
against the silky strands, shifting slightly to open her legs
wider, barely suppressing a moan as he obliged her. "You're like
me, Toby," she whispered. "You like this. You understand, that with
the right person, this can be a complete experience. Something
more."

It was an experience alright, one that he
might regret in the morning, but for now he was fixed in place,
powerless to do anything other than worship Charlotte and what she
was letting him do to her body.

"Happy birthday, Toby." Her voice was as
soft as a caress.

Best birthday ever. No question.

Charlotte skipped school the next day. This
was not hard to get by her mother, she almost never took a day off
school, so Iris was unconcerned when Charlotte said she wasn't well
and wanted to stay home. She simply took her daughter at her word
and left for work. Charlotte lay in bed for an extra hour, getting
up long past nine. After potting around the house for a while,
eating toast, listening to the radio while washing the dishes, and
then hanging out the washing her mother had left in the machine,
Charlotte went back up to her room to lie down again. She changed
her mind though once she was at her doorway, entering Toby's room
instead, and lying down on his bed. Turning her face into his
pillow, she inhaled deeply. She lay like that for a long time,
inhaling the scent of him, wrapping herself in his sheets, sinking
into his bed, wishing for every moment that he was here with
her.

He had pulled back from her again last
night. Fled the room, shutting himself away, from both her and what
he really wanted. Charlotte wished now she had never started
reading that book to him. What they had done together was the most
intense experience of her entire life, yet in the end, it had been
too much. She had scared him off again, misread the signals, and
driven him right back to that stupid fucking dishrag, Anne. It was
taking all of her self-control on a daily basis not to knock the
bitch to the ground, just so she could wipe that smug, pink lip
glossed smile, right off her stupid Barbie face. Charlotte buried
her face into her hands, tears stinging her eyes. She let out a
loud, shriek of frustration. He had ruined her. Completely ruined
her. She couldn't even so much as look at another guy anymore, not
after the way he had called her out as a slut. She would die with
her virginity grown back and the memory of his hands and lips on
her as the only thing to sustain her until it was all over.

And maybe some of Anne's blood on her
hands.

Charlotte had thought for a brief mad moment
that she might talk to her mother about it all. But Toby's fear of
her parents knowing about them held her back; he would be furious,
and also, if she were entirely honest with herself, she was not as
confident about her father's reaction as she was about her
mother's, and anything at all she told her mother was likely to be
almost immediately disclosed to her father. That was just the way
they were.

She reached over and took up the book from
his bedside table, the one she had given him last night. He had
started reading it, a page bookmarked with a scrap of paper. She
ran her finger down the page, reading the part he had read up to.
On a whim, she got up and crossed over to his desk, searching out a
pen. On the scrap piece of paper she wrote some words:

You have ruined me for anyone else.

It was overly dramatic and not at all like
the sort of thing she would normally write on a note for a boy. But
Toby did not evoke normal feelings within her. He hadn't right from
the start. He evoked far more. Marking his place again with the
note, she straightened his bed before leaving his room, flipping
his pillow to hide the damp spots from her tears.

Charlotte was lying out by the pool when
Toby got home from school. She heard the door shutting, movement
within the house, taps running, footsteps getting closer, and then
he was there, standing over her, his face full of concern.

"Why weren't you at school?" He collapsed
into the lounger beside her, leaning forward with his elbows on his
knees. While his tone had been demanding, his expression was full
of concern.

She shrugged. "I just needed a day off." She
closed the book she had been reading. Great Expectations, one of
her favourites. Reading about Pip made her think of Toby. She
imagined herself as Estella, but as a far more sensual and
welcoming Estella, one that would not have let Pip go, no matter
what Miss Havingsham, or society, might have insisted.

"I missed you." He smiled at her, his eyes
crinkling, dimples showing.

She tried to ignore the leap her heart made
at the sight of his face looking at her in that way. He was
dangerously appealing, and she was hopelessly addicted. Well and
truly ruined. Endeavouring to hold onto some small shard of her own
dignity, she regarded him coolly. "You never come anywhere near me
at school so I find that hard to believe."

"I always know you're there. I watch you all
the time. My eyes missed you today."

She smiled at that, unable to help herself.
He was adorable when he teased her. She lay her head back on the
lounger, content with just being near him again.

"I broke up with Anne today."

Charlotte tried not to feel excited about
this, but it was useless. Her heart thudded, heat flooded her
armpits, and a jittery sensation of butterflies pushed its way into
her stomach. "What did you tell her?" She leaned forward eagerly,
hoping he had really let Anne down, so much so that she may have
even cried.

"That I didn't want go out with her
anymore."

"Was she upset?" Charlotte probed, unashamed
at her inner glee.

"Not particularly. She said she thought it
might be for the best. That we had been moving along a bit too fast
and that things were in danger of getting a little bit out of
control." He grinned then and Charlotte smirked.

"What did you do to her? Mess up her pink
lip gloss with a kiss and try to touch her on the boob through five
buttoned up blouses and cardigans?" Charlotte rolled her eyes. Anne
was a freak.

"It was an accident!" Toby laughed and
looked away. "Seriously, she was okay. It was never much of
anything." He looked back at Charlotte. "She's not really my
type."

Charlotte licked her lips. "What's your
type?" Her heart beat faster with excitement. She loved this game
he liked to play with her, this cat and mouse exchange. The
knowledge that Anne was no longer a threat boosted her confidence.
It was pathetically galling to have been in the position of
competing with someone like Anne.

Toby stared at her, his eyes wandering down
the length of her body. "The type of girl who reads me stories at
bedtime."

Charlotte did not trust herself to speak. If
she did, she would likely ruin this moment and then he would run
again. Always running from her. She waited him out.

"The type of girl who tries to grow her
virginity back for me even though I don't even care that she no
longer has it. The type of girl who makes me laugh without even
trying to. The type of girl who makes me feel like there is no one
else in the world quite like me." Toby reached out with a finger
and touched Charlotte on her arm lightly. "You make me feel
important."

"That's how you make me feel," Charlotte
responded, her voice no more than a whisper. She could barely
breathe. She was so close. So close to getting what she craved more
than anything else.

Toby put his whole hand onto her arm,
cupping her elbow. "If we do this, we need to keep it to ourselves.
Just like you said last night. I'm still worried about your
parents, so no friends can know. At school we need to act the same
as we always have, and in front of your parents, we can't let on
anything at all. I mean it. I won't do this with you if you can't
give me that." He looked at her in all seriousness, his tone
brooking no argument.

Charlotte swallowed deeply, her gaze locking
onto his. She could pretend, easy, knowing she got to be with him
in private, pretending in public would be no big deal. She sat very
still, his arm still holding her elbow, assessing him, thinking
about what to say. She had not expected this from him. Perhaps, he
had not been running away from her last night, after all. Perhaps,
he had been just finding his way back. "When you say that you won't
do this with me unless I agree to keep it a secret, what is it
you're actually wanting to keep secret?"

Toby moved his hand higher up along
Charlotte's arm, tracing his fingers along the delicate skin of her
inner arm. "Everything we do together."

"What are we going to be doing
together?"

He exhaled sharply, pulling his hand away
and sitting back in the lounger. "I don't know what you want from
me, Charlotte." He seemed nervous all of a sudden.