“Fuck!” he shouts again, his cock like a firehose as it fills me with virile jizz. “Holy shit!”
He doesn’t pull out. He collapses over me, face in my neck, breath hot and ragged as an overflow of sticky sperm trails outfrom between our bodies. We cling together, a messy tangle of sweat and fluids and desire and need.
For a long time neither of us moves. Then, very quietly, he says into my ear, “I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”
It’s so raw, so unguarded, that I want to cry.
Instead, I pull his face up to mine and kiss him, soft and deep, like we have all the time in the world.
Eventually he helps me down, hands gentle now. My legs wobble, and I almost fall. He laughs, catches me, and says, “You’re a disaster.”
“So are you,” I reply, and we laugh together.
We clean up the mess in the kitchen, neither of us mentioning the sex or the jam on my ass or the way the countertop is probably going to smell like me for a week.
When I finally get dressed to leave, he walks me to the door, arm around my waist like he’s afraid I’ll vanish. He kisses me once, then again, then says, “Be good.”
I promise nothing.
I drive back to my dorm, sore and still leaking his come, every step a reminder of what happened. But I’m smiling, like I have a secret, the world brighter and sharper than it’s ever been.
I know I’m falling for him.
I know it’s dangerous.
But right now, I don’t care.
Right now, I’m the happiest girl in the world.
13
A MIRACULOUS ACADEMIC IMPROVEMENT
SIMONE
Two months pass like water under a frozen bridge: so fast you don’t realize it’s melting until you’re through and the ice is slush behind you. Winter at Century College is just like every other year, except I’m not. I’m Simone 2.0—a girl who, against all odds, is not only still in school, but suddenly pulling decent grades, and pretending that nothing has changed except the size of my ambition.
This is all on display one gray Tuesday night in the main library, a Gothic cave of cracked wood, yellow-glowing lamps, and the muffled desperation of a horde of students cramming for finals. I’m wedged into a booth-like table with Andie, both of us surrounded by teetering towers of literary theory—Jameson, Barthes, the complete set of Modern American Novels like a brick wall between us and the rest of campus. The air smells like dust and pencil shavings, but also like the lingering aftertaste of victory.
Andie’s got on a headband with pink cat ears—finals week tradition—and her eyes are ringed in purple glitter, even though her face says she hasn’t slept in days. She’s nibbling the end ofa mechanical pencil, staring at the text in front of her like it’s written in Klingon.
“You’re sure it’s a metaphor for race?” she asks, voice barely more than a ghost.
I tap the page in her Norton anthology. “Faulkner doesn’t do anything on accident, And. The cypress trees are literally imported, and the soil’s all wrong, so they can’t take root. Just like—” I flick the page again. “Just like the characters.”
She sets down her pencil. “Okay, but explain it again. Slow. Like you’re talking to a five-year-old.”
I smile and lean in, lowering my voice. “The point isn’t that they’re out of place. It’s that they know it, and they keep trying anyway. Faulkner wants you to see them as tragic, but also as stubborn as hell. It’s a kind of—” I pause, searching for the word. “—grace? Even in failure.”
Andie’s mouth drops open just a little, the way it does when she’s actually impressed. “Holy shit, Simone. Are you sure you didn’t hire someone to take over your brain?”
“Just sold my soul to Satan,” I whisper, rolling my eyes. “He does thesis statements, too.”
She cackles, then drops her voice. “Seriously, though. I don’t get it. Just recently, you could barely keep your eyes open in class, and now you’re, like, a Faulkner whisperer. What happened? Is it the gluten-free diet? The new vitamins?”
I smirk, twirling my pen. “Private tutoring,” I say, letting the syllables drag out.
Her eyes get wide, then she dissolves into a giggle fit that draws angry shushing from a nearby grad student. “You’re the worst,” she whispers. “Are you seeing him again tonight?”