Throb (Club Grit) (4 page)

Jason, seeing this, pulled one of my hands up, behind my back, to meet with his other hand. He took both of my hands in just one of his, and, using the free hand, reached around, under the front of my hips, to that space below my abdomen, to the softest part of my sex, and pressed down, hard.

I squirmed but he held me in place with the hand holding my hands, and although it hurt to be stretched that way, to be pressed down, I loved it, and I accidentally let go of the pillow with my teeth. It slid away as the hard fucking made the bed reverberate and the pillow fell off to one side. With nothing to bite down on now, I tried to get the sheets into my mouth, but failed, only serving to muss them further, sheets that had been so perfect and neat before, but now, were pooled around our bodies like ripples in a pond.

Instead, I was left to moan out loud, the same name, over and over: “Jason, Jason, oh, my God, Jason!”. He didn’t respond, too busy pressing against my clit harder and harder as if it was a button on a stuck vending machine he was trying to get a prize out of , and all the while, he kept screwing me, faster and faster, until he and I both felt the inevitable.

I could no longer form words, instead, just moaning aloud as the pressure was finally released, my pleasure escaping down my love canal like rainwater through a storm drain, soaking Jason’s cock with even more of my fluids, as if to lubricate his member even more, as if my body still needed a fucking, but even though I’d orgasmed, Jason didn’t stop thrusting or pressing against me.

No: instead, Jason dropped my arms and I didn’t prop myself back up, but just kept in the downward facing dog position, with Jason’s firm fingers still playing with my clit in ways that other men would never be able to, with his now free hand on one side of my hip, pulling me towards him and then pushing me away, in an arrhythmic, asymmetrical way, with no rhyme nor reason, but it didn’t matter, because I knew that now that Jason knew I’d had pleasure, that he was going to allow himself his own release.

I felt his cock twitch inside of me, involuntarily, and if there was one way to describe the way Jason used his body, it wasn’t “involuntary”, so whenever that happened, whenever I felt something unexpected, I knew that he was going to cum. As the hot fluids spurted up into me, hitting far enough inside of me that I was almost scared, for a second, that it would dislodge my IUD, even though that was impossible, I knew I’d been a good fuck toy for Jason, my mysterious man in private, the funny and cute bartender in public

But, as he pulled out of me before softening, I knew that we’d gone back to being what we were. He wasn’t really “my man”, and there wasn’t really a private, special Jason I knew. There were other girls he met, that he dated, that he fucked, that I knew I wasn’t special. It didn’t matter. To me, Jason was a good time, someone who wasn’t complicated, who was low maintenance, and who was safe.

I lay on Jason’s bed, the cum soaked comforter tossed aside because all we needed in the California heat was each other for warmth. His firm, pale arms wrapped around my caramel skin, like a shot of extra milk in a latte, forming a delicious swirl, I knew I had to ask a question that had been on my mind for some time. “How many girls...do you have this with? Like, friends with benefits?” I don’t know why I asked. It wouldn’t matter if he had five, ten, or twenty. Regardless, I bit down on my lower lip and looked away from him, out of embarrassment. I didn’t want him to think I was insecure, that the answer mattered more than it did. Because it didn’t. It didn’t matter, really. Really.

What I didn’t expect? Was for him to have:

“None, just you,” he said, turning to give me a kiss on the top of the head.

And that’s the only number that mattered, in the worst of ways. Jason knew we weren’t exclusive, and I was sure that he knew that he wasn’t the only guy in my life, that I hooked up with guys at the Greek mixers between Omega Mu Gamma and Beta Rho Omega, that I counted notches on my bedpost with pride instead of shame.

So why was I the only girl in his life?

Before I fell asleep, I turned on my phone to set my alarm so I’d get up in the morning. The only thing worse than seeing I had a message from Keanne before?

Keanne Slims: Two Unread Messages.

I
T WAS FRIDAY AND LIKE MOST UPPERCLASSMEN, I was smart and had “stacked” my classes so that my Fridays were absolutely free. It was what enabled me to start my weekend on Thursday nights. Still, I was in a rush to get ready to go out as I munched on a bagel with cream cheese and lox. I wanted to get stuff done today, important things like going to the spa and getting my nails done. I had a gap in my gel set that needed filling. I heard Emma, Kim, and Sam talking in the breakfast nook as I drank my coffee quickly to go join them.

“Did you get his number?” asked Kim.

Emma said, “Yeah, I’m going to call him this weekend.”

I walked in to interrupt. “No, silly, why don’t we just go to the club tonight? He knows you now, so we can get in the VIP section quicker. We’ll be able to cut the line, past all the plebs and uglies, and get to partying faster.”

“
That’s such a good idea, Becca!” said Samantha, sincerely.

“Bitch, like I don’t know?” I said with a giggle as we did a high five and I gave Emma a once over. She was a mess, even for a hungover girl. “You don’t look your best, though. We have to hit the spas. Like, now.”

We hit De La Sol, a tanning salon, first. I didn’t need a tan, with my already glowing mocha toned skin, so while the girls lay in the tanning beds, I was on a massage bed, getting a Swedish massage from a sexy Swedish guy, with blonde hair and blue eyes, named Lars, who wasn’t too chatty, but hummed along to the music playing in the background, ambiguous pan pipe music which could be from any country, from the mountains of Peru to the hills of Greece. It was heaven, just lying back and enjoying his hands rubbing all over my body. Why couldn’t all men be like this: easily paid, to do tasks that were fulfilling?

As I let the succulent smell of pineapple and sea salt fill my nose, I thought about the terrible pina colada hybrid that Jason had tried to make a few weeks ago, before I went on Spring Break, and I found myself wishing that it wasn’t Lars working my back’s muscles with his expert touch, but that instead, I had Jason feeling me up instead. Even though I wanted this to be a distraction from my daily life, the glass doors of the salon couldn’t keep out the sun or thoughts of the world outside, of the stories we wove there, of Jason.

After De La Sol, we went to La Aqua to get our nails done. La Aqua was a salon that reopened every few months with a new name in the same place with the same staff, but different décor, services, and prices. During this phase, it was obviously ocean themed, supposedly based on the luxury spas of Mexico. The décor was all white with eggshell finishes, smooth to the touch but with a fine orange peel like texture if you looked and felt closely, with blues (and obviously, aquas), smoky grey frosted glass, and transparent glass to complete the look, as well as special “foot baths”: aquariums filled with schools of small fish that would “eat” our feet’s dead skin. It felt ticklish, and it was weird (how hygienic could it be? That same fish nibbling on my toes had probably been nibbling on someone else’s hours before!), but it was trendy so nobody questioned it.

I didn’t speak up, but I thought it was stupid. That’s what Jason got about me: he and I could make fun of things like the tackiness of the spa, the stupidity of having fish nibble feet instead of just using sponges to wipe away dead skin, but I couldn’t talk that way around anyone else. Around Jason, I could be honest and open about what I found to be stupid about living in the sorority, about how there were girls that lost their Abercrombie & Fitch parkas and just charged Daddy’s credit card for a new one without putting up a poster or, God forbid, going to their classes to see where they left it, and about how that sort of attitude and lifestyle of excess wasn’t what I’d always wanted.

And that’s when I thought about Keanne, the guy who had tried to change that, had tried to change everything about me by trying to change anything about me. I’d seen the tabs he’d rung up for bottle service, tabs running in the hundred thousand area on the regular, and thought about how perverse it was that the Daddy’s boy could have a day of spending measured in terms of salaries of normal people, who he called “plebians”, or “plebs”, for short. It hadn’t stopped once I’d gone to college. Of course it wouldn’t.

The generic “spa” smell filled our sinuses as we were hurried over to the mani stations. My gel set would be easy to have filled, just needing a bit more pinkish taupe and shifting of the whites, while Kim went for a new set of French gels. Sam got gels too but she opted for nail art she saw on Pinterest: turquoise with stripes of metallic, done with striping tape and layers of polish, and on her accent finger, a triangle. She always went for what was trendy but still opted for the expensive gels so they wouldn’t chip. Emma went for a grey and green set of nails, traditionally done, but still expensive because she wanted different treatments done to make it look like she had grass and cobblestones for nails.

As “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons played in the background, its melody still recognizable even though it had been gentrified for the spa, turned into a piano and string quarter piece that was much more “acceptable”, I thought about how different we all were. Sam was your standard sorority girl, and Kim and I, well, we had our secrets and didn’t fit the traditional “sorority” look: we weren’t white, we weren’t blonde. Emma was your standard Midwestern kid coming to SoCal to find something, maybe herself? But she had the burden of money. Her parents had won the lottery so she spent her money willy-nilly on whatever she wanted, but she wasn’t careful, and being careful? That was something she had to learn about, first hand. None of us could teach her how to keep herself safe.

As we sat with our nails under the UV lights, Sam was the one that brought up the subject I didn’t really want to talk about. “So, what happened with you last night?” she teased.

“I went to Jason’s,” I said coolly.

“Oh? And?” she pried further.

“It’s just sex. It’s not a big deal.” But inside? I knew it was. I was scared of the fact that the night before, the whole “friends with benefits” arrangement I had with Jason was starting to feel like something more. It wasn’t something that I wanted to turn into a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. What Jason and I had was good, it worked. He was the guy I brought back to the sorority when I had nobody else, but last night, when he’d told me there was nobody else in his life but me? It scared the shit out of me.

“You look different today, like, you have a glow. You’re not pregnant, right?” asked Kim, always the passive aggressive one, but the only one I let talk to me that way.

“No, Kim. It’s just...Jason said something last night, that kind of rubbed me a weird way,” I admitted.

“Don’t you mean the wrong way?” Kim corrected me.

“No, a weird way. Like, apparently, he doesn’t do what we do with anyone else, if you know what I mean,” I said, being careful not to gesture with my hands in the UV lamp, lest I ruin my mani the way that Jason seemed to be ruining the thing we had going. Why did he need to make it complicated.

“Does he know that you do, though?” asked Becca. “It’s fine to have secrets, you know.”

“No, that’s the thing. He does now. He knows everything. He knows I bring home other guys, he knows about me and Keanne.” What I didn’t add was,
and he knows more than you two do
. Because it was true: I could talk to Jason without fear of judgment, but to be fair, he had no idea that The Guy was Keanne Slims, and that his fame was what was making things so complicated.

When we went back to the sorority house from the salon, the first thing I did was finally check the messages from Keanne.

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe two paragraph-long texts that were filled with apologies, explanation, and begging for me to come back to work for him? Maybe some sort of realization that he returned my affections?

What I didn’t expect:

Message 1: ajfadIATafnl;laoewl

Message 2: ey girl sorry bout that buttdialed ya #lol im back in socal lets kick it sometime txt me

That was the last thing I expected. At least he didn’t use cheesy Emoji this time. Also, I was pretty sure it was impossible to buttdial (or, I guess, “butttext”) somebody on a smartphone, what with the fact his butt would first have to magically unlock his phone, then navigate to his contacts, find my name, and then open up the messaging menu.

It was stupid. Why did Keanne have to lie? Why couldn’t he just say,
Hey Becca, I’ve missed you, let’s catch up?
Why did everything have to be wrapped in a lie or something fake? That was the one thing I hated about this part of Los Angeles, the part filled with glitz and glamour. It wasn’t “real”. It wasn’t really real, like the world I’d come from.

Keanne was from fucking Canada. Although he decided he was a rapper and a hip hop artist, he wasn’t exactly as “Legit” as his song, “The Legit Prodigy” claimed. He had never lived on the streets or couch surfed like people I’d known in high school had to do. He’d never had to make a choice to do something like sell drugs or his body to make end’s meets even though he was morally against it, like a lot of girls from back home had to. I knew how blessed I’d been, living in Compton with two parents who had worked so hard to give me an education, who had been so proud the day that I’d gotten not only my acceptance to University of California, Beverly Hills, but scholarships to cover the bulk of it, with loans for the rest, and who continued to be proud of me. What would they think if I brought a guy like Keanne home, who thought that because of the color of his skin, he had some claim to the narrative of streets he’d only been driven through in limos, whose feet had never even touched our same ground, not to mention walk our paths?

I wasn’t about to pretend that Jason was any different. There was still so much I knew about Jason, but what I did know didn’t surprise me: that he was doing his “own thing” between his undergraduate and graduate degrees, that although he made a good amount at Club Grit, somebody else was bankrolling his fancy apartment, and that although he’d gone to fancy boarding schools on the East Coast, and that he tried to hide that from most people, that he sometimes came across as a “rich boy” nonetheless.