She moves her hips, pulling me deeper. My mind is filled with images from my dream: running through the forest, face covered in blood, speeding, feeling the wind wrap around me as I gain momentum. There’s tingling, electricity gathering deep inside me.
She stares back at me. She nods a small nod and I wrap a hand around her tiny neck. I feel the gentle swell of her throat underneath the pad of my palm.
I tighten my grip.
She gives another nod. Tighter.
I go tighter. I feel her throat contracting, a worming movement underneath my hand as she swallows.
She gives another nod.
My grip is really tight now. This might bruise her, so I loosen my grip a bit, but she shakes her head and mouths don’t, don’t.
This is a satanic challenge. But I know she wants to see if I’m capable of meeting it, if I’m at her level, if I’m not boring. I imagine dozens of little boys before me panicking, stopping, or worse, fuck-this-shit stopping, or worse still, telling her to get the hell out, calling her a freak.
I don’t want to be a disappointment. I can’t be a disappointment. I want to be her first love. I want to be the one to break the spell, make her fall for me, whatever it takes. So I tighten my hand around her neck, my fingers digging into her skin, too deeply now.
She grimaces but I keep tightening my grip. I feel my nails breaking her skin and I imagine I feel the wetness, blood, seeping from underneath my nails and I tighten –
She closes her eyes then, slowly, like a doll. A smile spreads on her face.
I loosen my grip, and it’s as if I’d been choking myself too – my whole body uncoils as relief comes over me.
Bride gasps and coughs, then just breathes loudly, bringing her hand to her throat. She tenses her lower back and thrashes backwards, her cunt spasming and contracting, squeezing me and drawing everything out of me, milking all the cum right into her – which is when I realize that I’m not wearing a condom this time, which should deter me but just makes me come harder. As I come, I have some kind of a half hallucination of something primitive, primal, an egg exploding into a fetus, birth splitting open our united bodies, shattering my entire being into a powerful orgasm.
I collapse on top of her. In the semi-darkness I see Bride’s eyes flicker, something behind them coming apart, loose, some kind of sadness, though maybe I just imagine it. We lie there, next to each other, cooling off, not talking.
I fall asleep with my arm draped over her flat stomach; in my dreams, the furry animal that is and isn’t me is digging up a burrow somewhere in the forest with the moon shining on.
30
THE PHONE RINGS AND I REACH FOR IT, CLOUDY WITH SLEEP. The morning light is sharp, knives in my eyes.
“Hello,” Bride says. In the phone, not beside me, which is strange, but then again, she’s a strange girl, so I just say, “Hello.”
“Sleep well?”
“Yes. I had the weirdest dream,” I say, looking at where her body left a whisper of an imprint on the sheet.
“I’m wondering if you could meet me on the beach,” she says in an oddly businesslike tone.
I don’t mind that she doesn’t want to be flirtatious on the phone, so I don’t push my dream chat – I just ask what time, and she says as soon as possible.
Then I remember the condom. “Is this about the condom?” I say.
“How about you meet me in an hour?”
There’s a pill a young girl can take within the first forty-eight hours. I have no clue if a pill like that is available over the counter or if we’ll have to find a hospital where they can administer it. I don’t know if she’s old enough or if she’s too old for it. I already dread the wait in the clinic and whatever else, a possible lecture from a gynecologist, some mustachioed local doctor with a degree from a university in Nassau or Zagreb.
I should maybe call Dr. Babe. It would be good to bring an actual woman that I fuck to her; maybe it would finally intrigue her the way my asking for tests never seems to. An actual woman might make things real. I feel like Dr. Babe is the type who likes a challenge – after all, she finished medical school, and that is a very challenging thing for a girl.
Bride says, “By the smoothies. I’m picking up a couple of things from there.”
I say yes and hang up. It’s going to be a nice day today according to the Internet, twenty-seven degrees and a breeze. A fantastic day to spend on the beach, and even though I find it impossible to sit on the sand for long stretches of time, I imagine going with Bride and lying side by side, discussing the girls that walk nearby, unaware of our predatory eyes.
I don’t have time for a long workout so I do a super-thirty, multi-intervaclass="underline" jump rope, diamond push-ups, Hindu squats, leg thrusts, kick lunges. I go fast and hard to quell the anxiety that for some reason has reared its head again.
I take a cold shower, so cold that my head feels numb and there’s pain in my ankles as the water cascades down my body. After drying myself off and putting on skin lotion, I put on a clean white linen shirt and linen pants. I skip shaving since it’s day three. I’ve been told a thousand times how great I look with my near-beard. It’s my summer look.
I let Dog out in the backyard to do his business. I make a mental note to scoop the business later to keep the raccoons away. You don’t want dog shit in your yard ever, or you’ll end up with all the shit-eating animals taking over.
I grab a bottle of vanilla-protein smoothie, the last bottle left in the fridge, and I gulp the entire thing. Then I lock the door and walk toward the beach, the liquid sloshing uncomfortably in my belly.
The sun is pale. It’s not even eight a.m. In the distance, the closed shack looks haunted, like a place that’s been abandoned for decades because of a deadly virus. They should repaint it.
I see Bride sitting on one of the picnic tables out front. She is facing the water. I get hard as soon as I notice a flimsy yellow scarf around her thin neck.
She turns and shades her face with her palm. “Hey you,” she says.
“Hey.”
“Sorry to get you up so early. I thought of letting you sleep in, but then I thought it would make more sense if we got this out of the way.”
“Got what out of the way?” I bend to kiss her, but she moves her face away. She coughs. Then she looks at me and smiles a sad little smile.
Perhaps it’s how fond I’ve grown of her over the past couple of days, perhaps I failed to see this all along, but now I can tell that her charm truly comes out when she smiles. Despite the facial asymmetry, her mismatched nose and lips, she’s one of those women who blinds you with beauty as soon as you tell her a joke she likes. She’s the kind of woman for whom you will long madly, possessively, as soon as she stops laughing, and then all you’ll ever want to do in life is make her laugh again.
I want to tell her this. I also want to tell her to never get a stupid nose job, never let some idiot tell her that she would be more perfect if she inflates her lovely breasts with silicone, but I keep quiet, waiting for her to talk, something uneasy slithering its way down my back as I stand waiting.
“Thanks for coming. Though I guess in a minute you’ll wish you’d stayed home,” she says.
“What do you mean? I’m glad I came. I’m always happy to see you.”
“Okay,” she says and shrugs. “Have you ever really punched anybody? Like when you got angry at them?” she says, and I immediately think of our bedroom games. Will I have to punch her next to prove myself to her? The chill on my back doesn’t let up.