He blinked and half sat up, weight resting on one elbow. “Thanks for getting me home, but you can go now. I think I’m starting to straighten up.”
“Want me to call someone? Your fiancée?”
“No! No. I’ll be okay.”
I looked at him like I wasn’t too sure. “You thirsty?”
“Parched.”
“I’ll get you a drink.”
The kitchen was small, but immaculately renovated: stainless-steel appliances, subtle downlighting, and a splashback of tiny blue-and-white tiles. Clean glasses gleamed on the draining board, and a small courtyard with a Weber barbecue and an outdoor setting was visible between the slats of the wooden venetians. I found fresh-squeezed, pulp-free orange juice in the fridge and a frosted bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer and mixed two strong drinks before digging one long acrylic fingernail into my coke baggie and snorting a hefty bump. Taking the soy sauce container out of my skirt pocket, I sized it up under the light. Half full. The initial dose had probably been a little low, so I emptied the remains into Josh’s drink, took a second little fish from my pocket, and added half of that. He just needed to relax a bit, let go of his inhibitions, and the G would help. I tried it out myself a few days earlier, and it had worked so well I’d ended up in a fairly revolting three-way with Matt and Dave.
He sipped the drink and made a face. “Does this have vodka in it?”
“No way! Booze increases the effects of sedatives, but the acid in the OJ should neutralize whatever those guys slipped in your whiskey.” A druggie wives’ tale with zero scientific basis, but Josh believed it and gulped the whole lot in one.
I told him I’d leave just as soon as I’d used the loo, but took my sweet time to give the G a chance to kick in. I peed, did a couple more lines in their modern, white-tiled bathroom, fixed my makeup in the mirror, spritzed a little of Josh’s L’eau d’Issey Pour Homme on my wrist, then slipped off my pink-lace knickers and shoved them in my handbag. I wanted everything to be smooth and cinematic. We deserved it.
Back in the lounge room Josh was flat on his back on the rug, seemingly fascinated by his hand, which he waved around in the air, like a kid sticking his arm in the slipstream out the car window. I stalked the bookcases and found a Bose stereo system and shelf of alphabetized CDs, put on Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call.
“I love this,” said Josh.
“Me too,” I lied. Sure, I liked our song, but most of Cave’s tunes were too whiny or religious for my taste.
A framed photograph on the mantelpiece pictured Josh receiving his doctorate, wearing a robe and clownish hat. He was flanked by his parents and fiancée, an earnest-looking brunette who could have been quite attractive if she’d gotten a few hair extensions and a decent eyebrow wax. The parents looked fit, self-satisfied, and expensively dressed, and it suddenly dawned on me how Josh and his fiancée had been able to buy this place. Ashfield was close to the city, rapidly becoming gentrified, and the flat wouldn’t have left much change from eight hundred grand. You couldn’t save that sort of deposit as a sessional academic.
Nick Cave was singing some boring churchy dirge so I fast-forwarded to “Are You the One I’ve Been Waiting For?” stuck it on repeat, and sat down next to Josh.
“You seem okay now,” I said, although his pupils had dilated and his forehead was beaded with sweat.
“I feel reeeeaaaally good,” he said.
Bingo, baby. I leaned over and kissed him and, when he didn’t resist, I shifted sideways and laid on top, felt him hard beneath his beige chinos, and squirmed around to make him harder. Trouble with G was it could be difficult to come, and I wanted our first time to be perfect, so I reluctantly unlocked lips and slid down his body, unbuckling his belt and opening his fly. His cock sprung free and I opened my mouth and put my “specialized knowledge” to work. You should have seen him, bucking, moaning, fingers all twined up in my hair. When he got close I disengaged, sat up, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and took off my top so he could cop a look at my magnificent tits, then I slid down on his cock and OMG. It was nearly too much for me. I’m not talking size-wise, because, to be perfectly honest, it could have been a tad bigger, but the feeling inside my pussy was almost too intense to bear. I know this sounds like something Kailee would say, but it was as though his cock was talking to me, communicating with my vagina in some bizarre, otherworldly way. Normally at this point in proceedings I’d be putting on a pretty good show, gasping and thrashing my hair around and massaging my boobs all porno style, but all I could do was sit there, sort of stunned, feeling like I was dissolving into him, surrounded by a halo of golden light. (“Tantra,” Kailee told me later. “You were totally having tantric sex.”) When I stopped sliding up and down on his dick Josh groaned in frustration, flipped me over onto my back, and climbed on top. I hooked my ankles over his shoulders and as he drove into me, belt buckle bouncing off the back of my thigh, I felt like I was having a kind of continuous orgasm, with no beginning and no end, and the feeling was so overwhelming that it was almost a relief when he made one last deep thrust, emitted a guttural cry, and collapsed on top of me, his chambray shirt soaked through with perspiration. When he rolled off, I realized my cheeks were wet and I thought he’d sweated on me, but no — I’d been crying.
I never cry.
When Josh finally got his breath back, he opened his mouth to speak and I turned to him, eager to hear his first words.
“I feel terrible,” he said. “What am I going to tell Kelly?”
This was not what I’d been hoping for.
“Don’t tell her anything.”
“Lies are the greatest murder,” he muttered, staring up at the fringed lampshade. “They kill the truth.”
“Say what?”
“Socrates.”
“But didn’t Camus,” I pronounced the name correctly, “write that a lie was a beautiful twilight that enhances every object?”
“Shit.” He looked stunned that I knew the line. “He did.”
“So stop trying to be the good guy. It’s useless. You know and I know this thing is bigger than both of us.”
He gazed into my eyes, then completely cracked up laughing. I knew he was high, but for fuck’s sake.
“What’s so funny?”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” he said, wheezing like a hyena.
I sat up and crossed my arms. “What about the lap dance? Remember when I asked, Do you feel that? You said yes.”
“I thought you were talking about my erection!” He broke up all over again.
I stood and walked back into the kitchen, naked but for my denim skirt, semen dripping down my leg. I absentmindedly wiped it with my hand, then licked my fingers. It tasted like warm apple pie, unlike Matt’s jizz, which was all asparagus and aluminum. See? Yet another reason Josh and I were meant to be together. If he could just get over all this moral and ethical bullshit. I mixed another screwdriver and my hand was shaking so much the OJ overflowed the glass. Fuck it. I sipped the excess then took the third little fish container from my skirt pocket and emptied the whole thing in. The second was still half full so I added that as well.
He was thirsty after all the exertion, and drank it down quick.
“Are you sure that didn’t have any vod—”
“Sssshhh,” I said. “Relax.”
Our song was still playing on repeat, and Josh closed his eyes and started breathing slow and deep. I laid my head on his chest, slid my phone from my bag, and took a cute selfie of the two of us. Josh fell asleep, but that was okay. I was happy just to lie next to him, pressing my body into that warm skin and inhaling his scent of sweat, washing powder, and Issey Miyake. His breath became shallower, and then it slowed some more. Eventually I crashed out too, and when I woke at two a.m. he was very still, and not so warm anymore. I got dressed, washed the glasses, and wiped down all the surfaces I had touched: the stainless-steel fridge, shaving mirror, and stereo system. Then I let myself out, hailed a cab on Frederick Street, and went home to Lidcombe.