Switch

He’s eaten me out before, though I’ve never asked him to. It’s always just…happened. But it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past week, his mouth and tongue and fingers fucking me until I come. Every night while he was gone I’d lie in bed, eyes wide open to the dark, and imagine him there with me. I’d pretend my fingers were his tongue, flicking my clit or sliding inside me, but it was never the same.

My friend Kira says her boyfriend won’t go down on her. Not ever. He’s all about the blow jobs but refuses to dine at the Y. He’s a pussy about eating pussy. I’d break up with a guy who expected me to suck cock but wouldn’t return the favor, but Kira says she’s in love. I think she just doesn’t know what love is.

Austin’s friends, the guys from the football team and the men he works with at his dad’s construction company, would probably say they don’t go down on their girlfriends, either. I wonder how many are telling the truth? I wonder if Austin tells them about me, if men talk about their sex lives in the same detail I do with my friends. I wonder if he’d admit he makes me come with his face between my legs, or if he’d deny it.

“Austin.” My voice is low and slow, almost not mine. His gaze jerks up. I put my hands on my inner thighs and open myself wider to his sight. “Use your mouth on me.”

He’s already on his knees before I finish. I gasp when his hot, wet mouth finds my skin. When his tongue strokes over my clit, I grip the arms of the chair and toss back my head, my back arching. It feels so good it almost hurts. The chair rocks me into his mouth again and again as he licks and kisses and sucks. When he puts a finger inside me, then two, I come hard with a strangled shout.

I look down at him. He’s smiling, full of himself. I touch his hair and want to tell him how much I love him, but something about the way he’s looking at me makes me suddenly shy. I want to close my legs, but his head is resting on my thigh and I can’t without pushing him away.

“What?” I sound nervous, because I am. “What are you looking at?”

“You.” Austin kisses my thigh.

I push him onto his back on the floor and straddle his legs until I can get his belt open and his pants down. His cock springs free, nice and thick. I take it in my hand and stroke. He’s already got a little pre-come dripping, and I lean forward to taste him.

“Fuck!” His hips jerk and his hand tangles in my hair. “Paige, God.”

“What?” I want to put him inside me, but we don’t have any condoms handy and there’s no way I’ll go bareback.

“Nobody…”

I frown and sit back on my heels, my grip tightening on his prick. “Nobody what?”

What the hell did he get up to while he was away?

“Nobody does this like you,” Austin says.

He thinks he’s giving me a compliment, but I let him go and grab up my shorts. I make sure to grab my panties, too. Don’t want to leave them on the floor for my mom to find. “Nobody, who?”

“Huh?” He lifts his head to stare, then sits when he sees my expression. “What’s the matter?”

I stab the air with my finger. My throat is tight when I swallow, and I blink away the burn of tears. “Nobody does what like me? Suck cock? Nobody, who? Who else is sucking your dick, Austin?”

“Nobody,” he says and must realize how it sounds, because he scrambles to his feet to come after me when I stalk down the hall to my tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment. “That’s not what I meant, baby.”

“Don’t you ‘baby’ me.” I grab my robe from the hook on the door so I don’t have to try to get into my clothes while we fight.

His hands come down on my shoulders and turn me, reluctantly, to face him. “I just meant that the other guys, they tell me their girls don’t do the stuff you do.”

I guess that answers my question about if they talk about sex. I don’t smile, don’t lift a brow, just keep my face stony. Austin pushes my hair off my shoulders.

“That’s all I meant. That nobody…that you’re so great.”

“Great at sucking cock?” I frown, even though I’m glad to know he thinks so.

“And other things.” He teases me back toward the bed and I let him until we’re both lying on top of the quilt my grandma made me.

Austin strokes down my body and kisses me. When his hand finds my pussy again, I know I’m wet from earlier. His fingers slide against me. His breath is hot on my neck as he pants. His thumb presses my clit and his fingers move inside, then out. Against my thigh, his cock presses hot and hard. He moves his mouth to my nipple and sucks gently, and though I came just a little while ago, desire gathers in my belly again.

“I missed you,” he says again.

“Did you?”

Austin nods against my neck. It seems stupid to be angry with him now, or to worry about if he cheated on me while he was gone. I know he did, once or twice, when we were in high school. Hell. I cheated on him, too, if you want to count the times he thought we were on and I thought we were off and vice versa. But not since graduating, not since we both got full-time jobs and a full-time relationship.

He fumbles for the rubbers I keep in the box in my nightstand and puts one on. I could help him, but I’d rather watch just now. He rolls it on over his cock, his teeth clamped onto his lower lip in concentration. Then he moves up my body and centers himself before pushing inside me.

I groan; I can’t help it. I fucking love this, the sex. His weight. His prick so hard and thick and long inside me, so long it hurts sometimes when he fucks me, but I like that, too. He’s got muscles in his arms from all the heavy lifting and I grab one as he thrusts inside me.

I lift my hips to meet him and his belly presses my clit every time we move together. Orgasm doesn’t build, it tears me down. I’m coming again when he starts to move harder and faster, and I know Austin’s coming, too.

It doesn’t always happen that way, that we finish together, so it’s sort of magical and leaves me sleepy and contented and cuddly, after. He loops an arm around me when he’s thrown away the condom. We lay on my bed, spooning, and his breath ruffles my hair.

“Paige,”Austin says. “I want to ask you something important.”

And then we’re on the ocean, in a boat that’s going down.

As the cold, dark sea closed over my head, the sound of the alarm bells ripped into my ears. I took a deep breath, even though I was underwater. I kicked, the tight clutch of the waves around my ankles becoming the tangled grasp of sheets around my feet as I opened my eyes and fumbled, without seeing, for the phone.

“What?” At this hour I couldn’t be expected to be polite, could I?

“Paige?”

I blinked, not wanting to look at my bedside clock’s numbers. It was way too fucking early to be up. “Arty. What’s the matter? Where’s Mama?”

“Mama’s still sleeping. And Leo’s at work,” he added, though I hadn’t asked. “I’m hungry.”

“Make yourself some cereal.” I stifled a yawn and pondered giving in to a hangover that wouldn’t have bothered me with just a few more hours’ sleep.

“There isn’t any.”

“No Cheerios? No Raisin Bran?”

My little brother, the only other sibling I’d ever actually lived with, made a familiar noise of disgust. “I don’t like those kind.”

“Then I guess you must not be that hungry.” I was hungry, but didn’t feel like getting out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn to fix toast. “Arty, it’s too early to call me. What did I tell you about that?”

“Can’t you come over and make me some pancakes?” His little-boy voice sounded very far away. I pictured him in his Spider-Man pajamas, bare feet swinging because his legs weren’t long enough to reach the floor. “Please?”

Maybe if I kept my eyes closed I’d fall back to sleep. I snuggled deeper under my soft blankets. “Buddy, I don’t live there anymore. I told you that. I told you I couldn’t just come over whenever you called.”

Silence.

“But I miss you,” Arthur said in a tiny voice.

I sighed. “I miss you, too, buddy. How about I come down and take you to the movies sometime soon?”

“When?” At nearly seven, the kid had been reading since he was four and could tell time on an analogue clock, a skill that sometimes stumped me. There wasn’t much that slipped past him. “Today?”

“Not today, no. Maybe later this week.”

“When? When?”

I couldn’t think straight and just tossed out a day. “Wednesday?”

“Saturday. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. That’s a week!”

He sounded so dismayed I hated to laugh. Laughing, in fact, hurt my head. “Not quite. Five days.”

“That’s too long!” Arthur’s voice pitched high enough to drill my tender ears.

“You’ve got gymnastics on Tuesday, and Monday I’ve got an appointment in the evening. Sorry, buddy. You have to wait until Wednesday. Besides,” I said, offering an incentive against despair, “the new Power Heroes movie comes out on Wednesday. How about that?”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced, only resigned. “But I’m hungry now, Paige.”

“Cereal. Or have a snack from the drawer.”

“Mama says no snacks from the drawer until after breakfast.”

“Aren’t there any cereal bars in the drawer?” I bit back another yawn. If I didn’t get back to sleep in the next ten minutes I was not going to be a happy camper.

“Yesss…” Even Arthur knew where I was going with this, but he sounded like it might be too good to be true.

“Have one of those. They’re cereal, right?”

“Can I tell Mama you said it was okay?”

“Sure.” It wouldn’t be the first time she’d holler at me for giving the kid permission to do something she’d have refused. On the other hand, this was the woman who’d allowed me to go to school in a pair of hand-me-down, slip-on Candie’s shoes in the sixth grade and bought me my first package of rubbers in the tenth. She was a different sort of mother to Arthur than she’d been to me. “Now let me go back to sleep, okay?”

“Okay. Bye, Paige.”

“Bye.”

“I love you,” my little brother said before I could hang up.

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever said it, but suddenly the memory of how he’d smelled as a baby washed over me with enough force to push my eyelids open like snapped-open blinds. How his hair had been so soft against my lips when I kissed his little baby head, and how the heavy weight of him had filled my arms and lap. How I used to hold him while I watched hour after hour of bad TV, just because he was so small and sweet. Just because he loved me.

“I love you, too, buddy. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

He had a seven-year-old’s social graces and didn’t say goodbye again, just hung up. I put the phone back in the cradle of its receiver and my head back in the cradle of my pillow, but sleep had vanished and there was no getting it back.

With a groan, I looked at the clock. Almost eight. And I’d gone to sleep, what, just before six this morning? God. I was so going to pay that kid back one day, maybe when he was a teenager and prone to sleeping as late as he could…yeah. I’d wake him up.

Unfortunately, my revenge was far-flung and I was still awake. I stretched and sat up, waiting for the rush and boil of acid stomach or the pound of a headache, but aside from a gnawing hunger, I felt all right. At least until I heard the muted beep from my cell phone, which I’d left abandoned in my sparkly purse under the pile of my discarded clothes. I had to dig past my Steve Madden pumps to reach it.

Five missed calls.

Five? Crap. I thumbed the keypad to check out the numbers. I had voice mails, too, though without dialing in I couldn’t tell how many. Kira had called me around 4:00 a.m. but hadn’t left a message. That could be good or bad, depending. One was an old call from my mother I hadn’t deleted. The other three were from Austin.

Triple crap.

The voice mails were from him, too, half an hour apart. The first two were brief “when are you going to get here?” messages. The last one had come in around six-fifteen, after I’d already gone to bed. It turned the corners of my mouth down.

“Look, I know I’ve been an asshole to you in the past.” Then fifteen seconds of awkward silence, punctuated only by the soft in-out of his breathing. “I’m sorry. I just…I was a fuckwad, and I’m sorry. Call me, okay? Please.”

A few more seconds of silence and he added, “Please.”

Is there anything more simultaneously pathetic and arousing than a pleading man?

I couldn’t bring myself to delete that message. I thought I might want to listen to it a couple-twenty more times. I thought I might want to get that statement, “Sorry, I’m a fuckwad.—Austin Miller” embroidered on a tea towel and wipe my hands with it.

It was the only time Austin had ever apologized to me for anything he’d ever done. I wasn’t sure it meant anything now. Not after all this time had passed.

I didn’t delete the message, but I didn’t call him back, either. Instead, I hauled my sorry ass out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom where I peed for what felt like an hour and brushed my teeth and pulled my hair on top of my head in a messy ponytail.

I wanted to go back to sleep, but I knew better than to expect to be able to. I was up for the day now. My stomach rumbled and I took my last two slices of wheat bread from the fridge, where I kept it to prevent mold, and popped them into my toaster oven. I needed to hit the grocery store in the worst way, though the state of my finances meant it would be another week of on-sale tuna and ramen noodles rather than steak and lobster. Ah, well. There was nothing new about that. I’d grown up thinking Kraft shells and cheese was gourmet fare.

While my toast browned, I sifted through the pile of junk mail I’d brought in the night before. I tossed aside a few catalogs addressed to the former tenant. I thought of the note I’d had yesterday, the beautiful paper and the words written in that fine hand. What had it said to do? Make a list of flaws and strengths? I thought of it as I ate my toast dry because I had no butter or jam.

You will write a list of ten. Five flaws. Five strengths. Deliver them promptly…

From the junk drawer next to my fridge I pulled a yellow legal pad and a stub of a pencil with a point rubbed to softness by the creation of many lists. Chore lists, mostly, or grocery. I’d never used it to detail my flaws and strengths.

I tapped the pencil against my lips as I thought.

Proud

Stubborn

Independent

Smart

Curious

Determined

Conscientious

That was it. As far as lists went, it didn’t feel complete, but I couldn’t think of more than that. So much for the ten, I thought as I put away the pen and paper.

And the real question was, which had I written? Flaws or strengths? Couldn’t they sometimes be both?

I looked again at the tablet on the table. It had made me think hard about myself, though it hadn’t been meant for me. I hoped the person it was meant for had better luck.

Chapter 06

I finished my shopping just before noon. I had only two small bags of groceries, the bare minimum to get me through until payday. I’d left a few bucks in my wallet on purpose, though, for one reason. I didn’t need a large coffee with extra cream and a gooey cinnamon bun, but I wanted them.

Located in the building adjoining Riverview Manor, the Morningstar Mocha teemed with people out for a caffeine fix. A few joggers, bundled against the cold, filled travel mugs at the small stand in the corner holding the sweetener packets and jugs of milk and bins of creamer containers. And in the corner, my corner, the seat I took because it was in the smallest table and I was usually alone, sat my elevator eye-fucking buddy, Mr. Mystery.

Was it synchronicity? Or serendipity? His wasn’t the only familiar face there. I spied a few people from my building, one or two I recognized as Mocha regulars, and of course I knew the girl behind the counter. Her name was Brandy, and you couldn’t miss her. She chewed gum like cud.

I deliberately tried not to stare at him while I ordered my coffee and bun, but he was still there by the time they arrived. Still there when I’d dumped my mug full of sugar and cream. He wore a white, long-sleeved shirt beneath a black concert T-shirt and worn jeans that suited him nicely. His hair looked as if he’d run a hand through it a few times or just rolled out of bed. He had a large mug in front of him, still steaming, and a plate with the remains of a bagel slathered with cream cheese and lox. He was staring out the glass onto the street, empty but for the occasional weekend-traffic car cruising slowly past. In front of him sat a pad of legal-size paper, white not yellow, and in his left hand he held a thick-barreled pen. A worn leather bag rested at his feet as faithful as a hound.

The lighting inside the Mocha was golden and indirect, but late-winter bright sunshine shafted through the plate-glass window and across his face. I wanted to stare and drink in the fine-featured grace of him. The casual beauty. The crooked twist of his mouth as he bit down on his lip in concentration, the furrow of his brow. The way his hand curled around the pen caressing the paper.

Fortunately for me, he was still staring out the window, absently doodling, when two people in matching tracksuits slammed into me and knocked my coffee and cinnamon bun all over a couple, who looked as if they hadn’t yet gone to bed, sitting at the table in front of me.

The fitness twins were very kind. They bought me new coffee and pastry and replaced the party-kids’ bagels, soaked through by my spilled drink. They did it all with a fanfare that smacked a bit of “look at me, what a good person I am,” but they did it. I didn’t dare look at the man by the window until all the fuss and feathers had died down. When I did, finally, my fresh mug was burning my palm and my eyes had blurred from the dip in my blood sugar. I didn’t want to shove the entire bun into my mouth, but a dainty nibble wasn’t going to get the goods down my throat and into my stomach fast enough.

He glanced over at me as I was licking icing off my mouth. He smiled. I paused, coffee halfway to my mouth, and smiled back.

I thought for sure he’d say hello, but maybe without the allure of my fuck-me pumps all he could manage was the grin. Maybe he didn’t recognize me as the woman from the elevator. Or more likely, he didn’t care.

He got up, papers and pen already tucked away in his bag, garbage cleared from the table. He slung his arms into a plaid flannel shirt I hadn’t noticed hanging on the back of his chair and eased the strap of his leather bag over one shoulder. He left the Morningstar Mocha without a backward glance, which allowed me to stare after him without fear of being caught.

He’d left a crumpled discard to the window side of his chair, on the floor. With a quick glance around the now-empty coffee shop to see if anyone would notice me being a total snoop, I vacated my seat and took the one he’d just left. It couldn’t have been warm from his ass, or at least I shouldn’t have been able to feel it if it was, but I imagined heat. I knew I shouldn’t pick up the paper, or smooth it out in front of me. I knew, especially, that I shouldn’t read it.

But I did, anyway.

I didn’t learn the secrets of the universe. I didn’t even find out his name. He’d mostly been scribbling and doodling, with a few chicken-scratch phrases I could read but didn’t understand here and there on the paper. Looking over it, I should’ve felt dirty. I only felt disappointed. But what had I expected, a hand-written autobiography listing his education, career and medical history?

Still, I smoothed out the creases as I finished my breakfast and folded the paper in half. Then half again. And again, until finally I’d turned a legal-size sheet of paper into a palmful of secrets. It wasn’t any of my business. I had no right to keep it. It weighed there as heavily as a handful of lead, and yet I couldn’t manage to toss it into the trash.

I did wish, though, that I’d lingered over the coffee. River-view Manor doesn’t have a doorman, and the front-desk staff was there to accept packages and take care of problems, not keep anyone from entering the building. The building had security cameras in the elevators and on every floor, but no real means of keeping anyone out who wanted to be in.

Part of me wasn’t surprised when I turned the corner of the hall to see Austin waiting for me in front of my door. Another part wanted to turn and run away. I lifted my chin instead, wishing again I’d at least bothered to wear makeup, though honestly he’d seen me look way worse.

“What are you doing here?” I bent to put my bags down so I could pull my key from my purse. When I stood, Austin’s eyes were on my face, not my ass. Now, that surprised me.

“You didn’t answer my calls.”

I fit the key into the lock, but didn’t turn it right away. “I meant, what are you doing here?”

“I called your mom.”

I unlocked and opened my door and pushed it, but didn’t go through. I turned to look at him. My irritation must have been clear on my face, because he held up his hands right away as though I meant to punch him. “My mother told you where I lived?”

“Your mom always liked me.”

I blew a sigh that fluttered the fringe of my bangs off my forehead and then pushed through the door. I left it open behind me, as much of an invitation as I could bear to give. He followed and shut the door. Softly, with a click, not a slam.

I put my bags in the kitchen and kicked off my shoes. Austin stood still and watched me without making any move to sit. He looked around the apartment with interest, then shoved his hands deep into his pockets and rocked on his heels while I took my time unpacking and putting away my groceries.

“Can I sit down?” he asked finally, when I’d made it clear I wasn’t going to offer.

“Do you have to ask?” I kept my back turned as I sifted through the change from my wallet. I found a Wheatie penny and set it aside to put in my collection, then washed my hands thoroughly with soap and hot water. Money is one of the filthiest things a person can touch.

When I turned to look at him, he was still standing. We stared at each other across the expanse of my unimmense living room until I nodded. He sat the way he always had, legs sprawled, taking up as much space as he could.

I took my time cleaning the kitchen, wiping the counters and scrubbing the sink with bleach-infused powder. I even emptied the garbage pail and took the trash out to the chute at the end of the hall. I expected Austin to be restless or irritated by the time I came back, but he’d found a copy of a Robert Heinlein novel inside the pile of books and magazines thrown into the straw basket next to the couch and was flipping through it.

“It doesn’t have any pictures,” I said from the doorway.

Austin put the book on the coffee table. “This is nice.”

He hadn’t risen to the bait, though I’d made a point of pushing one of his buttons. “The book?”

“The coffee table,” he said, still not rising.

“It was Stella’s.”

Austin nodded, like that made sense. “Glad I didn’t put my feet up on it.”