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He smiled at my echo of his question. The tight hold on my hair softened and he smoothed a hand over my head, then my cheek. “Yeah. I like it.”

“Good.” I bent back to the pleasure of letting him fuck my mouth.

And it was sweet, that pleasure. It wasn’t the act, but Johnny who made it so. The way he sounded and moved, the way he said my name as though I were the most precious gift he’d ever been given.

I knew he’d had blow jobs before, maybe even some more skilled, maybe even some more enthusiastic. Yet when I looked up at him, his face twisted with his desire, I didn’t see a man who was used to this, or who was taking it for granted. Johnny looked down at me with marvel in his eyes, as though all of this were a dream. A fantasy.

Not real.

He came into my mouth, and I swallowed the hot, slick taste of him without even a wince of protest. Funny how it worked that way here. With him.

His eyelids fluttered. He murmured my name. His hips pushed forward, his cock throbbed. And wonder of wonders, I came, too, in a slow, rolling rush of sensation unlike any orgasm I’d had.

I started laughing.

There on my knees, which were beginning to hurt, and with the taste of him still on my tongue, I laughed. I nuzzled forward again, against his softening cock, and kissed him there. Then I let him help me to my feet, and I kissed him.

“Emm, Emm, Emm,” Johnny said.

“Mmm,” I whispered into his mouth. “I like it when you say my name.”

“Emm,” he said again.

He pushed me back toward the bed, but before he could lay me down and do whatever delicious, wicked things he’d planned, the door flew open. Sandy came in, already babbling. She didn’t even stop when she saw the pair of us.

“Johnny, listen, I gotta talk to you,” she finished up, putting her hand on her hip.

“Sandy,” Johnny said in the voice of a man who’s gone beyond all patience. “Get the fuck outta here. Jesus.”

“Not until you give me some money.”

“What? I got to pay more money for you? What happened to the two hundred dollars I gave you last month?”

“I’ll…just wait outside,” I told him, moving away, though he’d tried to snag my wrist.

“You, stay,” Johnny told me. To Sandy, he said, “You, go.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her lower lip, the perfect picture of a sullen pout. “No.”

“Jesus, Sandy. You’re really gonna get it, you know it?”

“You see that?” she said to me. “That’s too much. He’s threatening me. What kinda guy is that, threatening the mother of his kid? It’s bullshit, I say. C’mon, Johnny. Just give me some money and I’ll go.”

“What do you need money for, anyway? I thought you were living with your mother? And I give you money for Kimmy, don’t tell me you spent all of it already. What does that kid need, gold-plated diapers?”

“I need it,” Sandy insisted. Her gaze slid over me, calculating. “I need it for something.”

“For what?”

“For…an abortion,” she told him with her chin lifted, mouth thin but quirked on the ends like she didn’t mean to smile but couldn’t help herself.

It seemed like my cue to leave. Not from jealousy—how could I be jealous of something that was created from my own imagination? But because whatever was happening between them didn’t need to involve me, because I didn’t want to be a part of it, I moved toward the door. I couldn’t actively control what happened in here, not like taking a handful of threads and weaving them together or pulling them apart the way I might in a real dream. But if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen, or so I thought.

Johnny tugged my arm but let go as I kept walking. “Emm. Don’t go.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “No, baby, you need to deal with this.”

It seemed like the right thing to say. His eyes lit. He grinned. He let me go. I walked past Sandy without giving her the benefit of a glance. Women know how to cut each other that way, and though I wasn’t jealous, I was definitely not interested in giving her any attention.

I walked out the door.

I ended up in my living room.

Chapter 15

A
t least this time I wasn’t naked.

I was, though, breathing hard. My stomach twisted. My head hurt so bad I cried out, low, and stumbled to the couch where I lay down and clutched a pillow. The world didn’t spin, thankfully, but it took a long few minutes before it settled.

I sat up slowly. “What the fuck.”

I sounded miserable. I felt it, too. Not so much physically, not after a few minutes, anyway. The damage in my brain had never made me feel bad physically, other than lately. It wasn’t my gut or head that made me feel this way, though. It was knowing that, even though the fugues were getting worse, possibly something had broken free inside my brain, that I might at this moment be bleeding out into oblivion….

I didn’t want the fugues to stop.

I liked being in a place where someone like Johnny Del lasandro was into me, where I didn’t worry about stuff like condoms and pregnancy, or hell…shaving my legs, for that matter. Or paying bills or exercising. But most of all, where Johnny put his hands and mouth all over, where he put his delicious cock up inside me, where I could touch him and kiss him and know he wanted it just as much from me as I wanted from him.

What I wanted right now, though, more than anything, was another hot shower. I stayed in there a really long time and felt only a little better when I got out. I combed my hair, slathered my face with cream. Pulled on a faded T-shirt that hit me midthigh and was thin enough to cling to every ample curve the mirror insisted on showing off. I studied my reflection, side to side, smoothing my hands over my breasts and belly and hips. I never wanted to hate my body the way so many of my friends seemed to, the way movies and television urged us normal-size gals to do.

“Work out harder,” I advised myself, sucking in my belly and cheeks to give an illusion of shadows. But I knew I wouldn’t. I knew that even if I did, there’d be one too many muffins in the Mocha, too many scoops of sugar in my coffee, because sugar and caffeine had always done what pills had only sort of stopped.

My wet hair had dripped all down my back, giving me a chill. I threw on a Lebanon Valley College sweatshirt and a pair of thick, rainbow-knit knee socks and went downstairs to make myself a cup or three of hot chocolate. I had a book and a bed in my future, if not a movie playing on my laptop at the same time. A quiet evening in.

Then the doorbell rang. I didn’t believe my ears at first, convincing myself it had been the neighbors’ bell even though I’d never mistaken theirs for mine before. When it rang again, followed moments later by a knock, I took my cell phone from where I’d left it charging on the counter and gripped it tight in my palm, ready to thumb in a swift 9-1-1.

I’d clearly been watching too many horror movies.

I didn’t have a peephole or whatever they called those fancy windows to the side of my door, though it did have an annoying and useless transom window above it. I vowed to remedy all that as soon as I could, not that it did me any good now, standing in my foyer with wet hair and no panties on, with the night sky pressing in on the transom and a stranger knocking so persistently.

The knock came again. Phone in hand, I slid back the chain lock and then the dead bolt. I cracked open the door. And then I swung it wide.

“Hi,” Johnny said, looking supremely uncomfortable and totally handsome in his long black coat with the scarf that made me want to wrap myself in it.

I found my voice faster than I thought I would. “Hi.”

We stared at each other, neither of us moving.

“Can I come in? It’s freezing out here.”

“I… Yeah, yes. Of course! Sure!” I stepped aside to let him in, along with a swirl of air the temperature of snowflakes, and closed the door behind him.

He turned to look at me. “I know it’s late.”

“It’s not that late. It just gets dark so early now. It’s not too late. Really.” I forced myself to shut up.

Why couldn’t I be with real, present-time Johnny the way I was with his imaginary-past counterpart? What had happened to the vixen, the vamp who knew how to flirt and how to take control of the situation? Instead, I stood and stared and practically scuffed the tile with my rainbow-clad toes and muttered, “Aw, shucks.”

“You mind if I take off my coat?”

“Of course not. I’ll hang it up for you.” I took it from him, then had no place to put it. We stared at it in my hands, silence awkward and brittle between us. Finally, I hung it carefully over the stair railing where the newel post would keep it from falling off.

“Do you want to come in? I was making—” the kettle whistled “—hot chocolate.”

It was what a girl would drink, I thought, trying to see what Johnny thought and finding nothing on his face but the beauty time hadn’t faded. I thought about offering him something more sophisticated. Like a liqueur, or something fancy I whipped up all casual like, with special tools and ingredients I just happened to have on hand.

“Sure. That’d be great, thanks.”

He didn’t move, waiting for me to lead. So I did, wondering too late if my shirt was too short, if my ass cheeks were hanging out. If he was looking at them if they were.

“Make yourself at home.” I gestured at the bar stool set up along the raised island I loved so much. “Do you want hot chocolate? Or something else? I could get you, um, juice or…a beer?”

“Nah. Hot chocolate sounds great. Good for a night like this.”

“Yeah, the temps have really dropped, huh?” I took powdered milk and cocoa from my cupboard. Sugar. Vanilla. Marshmallows. Chocolate chips.

Johnny watched as I assembled the ingredients along the counter. “That’s some setup.”

It was easy to smile at him, and somehow smiling took some of the edge off. “I call it lazy man’s gourmet cocoa. Except, well, I’m not a man. And it’s not really gourmet…”

Word vomit again. I swallowed my explanation. Tried again.

“It’s faster than boiling milk,” I said. “And I hate the way skim milk gets when you boil it. And when it’s scalded, gross. This way, using the powdered milk, the cocoa is as creamy as using milk, but without the gross parts.”

“And the rest?”

“That,” I said with a grin, “is all just bonus.”

Johnny smiled, too, though slowly, as though he’d almost forgotten how. “Sounds good.”

I handed him an oversize mug emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and took down my favorite mug for myself. It was also oversize, with a picture of the TARDIS on it. I mixed the cocoa in a glass mixing bowl, the kind with a handle and a spout and a nifty plastic lid. I even used a fancy whisk.

Johnny watched, saying nothing. I pretended I didn’t notice. I also pretended I wasn’t as clumsy as I was when I knew he was watching me.

I poured the steaming cocoa into the mugs and pushed the marshmallows and chocolate chips toward him. “Here. You can add your own bonus.”

“I think this is good like this.”

“Really?” I plopped three marshmallows into my mug, where they rapidly melted and spread sugary white goodness all over the cocoa. I added a handful of chocolate chips. “It’s reallllly good.”

Johnny took a marshmallow and put it in the cocoa, then a few chocolate chips. “Shit.”

“No, no, much better than that.” I sipped and watched him through the steam. “You’ll like it, I promise you.”

He lifted his mug and tasted, then nodded. “Yeah, it’s good.”

I was grateful for the island between us. I leaned a hip against it, sipping slowly so we could both act like the hot liquid took up so much attention it was impossible to talk. I even took my time blowing on it so I didn’t burn my tongue. Usually I was so impatient I scalded myself.

“So,” Johnny said after a few more minutes filled with awkward silence broken only by the sound of us both blowing on our cocoa and slurping.

I waited. He didn’t go on. He put his mug down, though, and then his hands on the counter. He looked at me, but not the way he did in my imagination. In the fugues, Johnny looked at me like I was something special he couldn’t quite figure out how he’d been lucky enough to get. Now he looked at me as if he simply couldn’t figure me out.

“Yes?” I played at being calm and composed, but inside my guts were doing jumping jacks.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. Softly at first, just a giggle, then another and more until I had to cover my mouth to hold back a full-on guffaw. I managed to squeak out a “Really?”

I’d seen his smile so many times in photos, in movies and in those magic times when I was dark. It looked the same now, but different, too. He was holding back a little. “Yeah. Really.”

My laughter eased, my belly muscles hurting a little but in a good way. I wiped at the corners of my eyes. “So talk.”

“I just thought we should discuss what happened at the studio.”

This sobered me, though not totally. “Uh-huh.”

“And that you should know why…it won’t work.”

It wasn’t something I’d never heard before, or never said, but it wasn’t at all what I thought he’d say. I put my mug on the counter and licked my mouth, not wanting to face him with chocolate smeared on my lips. “What won’t work, exactly?”