Red Hot Obsessions (74 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Do you think it’s weird for a guy not to want to have sex with you?” I asked. Stacey and I had managed to grab a private moment while the guys were unloading the camping gear. We were bringing it back from Blackwater Falls. We’d been back for a day or so, but we’d had to wait for Stacey and Jack to get home from visiting friends in Morgantown.

Her eyes got big. “What happened? You have to tell me what happened!”

“Like everything but that happened,” I said.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, he doesn’t want to do it. He basically told me that he’s cool with anything except that.”

“Except sex?”

I nodded. “But he totally like...” I looked around to make sure we were still alone, and I lowered my voice. “He got me off. More than once. And it was... earth shattering.”

She giggled. “That’s awesome.”

“Yeah,” I said. My eyes rolled back in my head. “No, it’s completely awesome. I mean, he’s fucking fantastic, but do you think it’s weird?”

“That you’re having orgasms? No, contrary to popular belief, it’s actually quite normal for women to climax.”

I shoved her. “Stacey. You know what I mean.”

“I don’t know if I do,” she said. She smiled mischievously. “I don’t want to get overly detailed, but, I mean, are you getting him off?”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “He won’t let me. He barely lets me touch him. Do you think that’s weird?”

Stacey considered. “Well, it’s out of the ordinary.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

“Hey,” she said, nudging me. “I didn’t say it was bad.” She tapped her bottom lip. “Actually, he sounds like the perfect man. He serves up multiple orgasms and asks for nothing in return?”

I giggled. “Good point.”

“You should count your blessings.”

“No, I am. I mean it, I think he’s great, and I’m so happy that you sent us on that camping trip, because it was awesome, and everything worked out perfect.” I bit my lip. “But I
want
to reciprocate, you know?”

“You need to talk to him about it.”

My lips parted. A little bit of air came through them.

“What?” she said. “Can’t you talk to him?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because... I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“Well, I would start by telling him he shatters the earth for you, and go from there,” she said. “Men take all sex talks better when they’re peppered with a lot of compliments about their prowess.”

I suddenly flashed on a mental picture of Jack and Stacey in bed. It made me feel sort of ooky. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this anymore.”

“Why? Because I said you should talk to Griffin?”

“No,” I said. “Because maybe it’s really weird for me to be telling you this stuff.”

“Oh come on,” she said. “I’m not gonna say anything. Not even to Jack, I swear.”

I hugged myself. Everything seemed complicated all of the sudden. “He is too perfect, isn’t he? There’s something wrong with it. All guys want to get off too.” I looked at her. “Don’t they?”

She lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe he’s like... not really a guy. Like in that movie
Boys Don’t Cry
, about that girl who dressed up as a guy and got murdered?” Of course, I had grabbed his crotch the first night, and I had definitely felt something there.

“I think he’s a guy,” said Stacey. “He has an Adam’s apple.”

“Good point,” I said. I took a deep breath. “That makes me feel better.”

“Have you tried to just jump him? Like go for it and grab it, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He stops me.”

“And what does he say?”

“He says not yet,” I said. “He says for me to hold on. He says we’ll get there.”

“So. Maybe you will?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Maybe he wants to make sure he’s given you an intense amount of pleasure before he even tries to get any,” said Stacey.

“He actually said something like that.”

“Maybe it’s true.” “Do you really think so?”

“I think you should talk to him,” she said.

I made a face.

“But if you don’t want to, maybe you could just wait a little bit and see what happens. You might be getting worked up over nothing.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I hope you’re right.”

*

Griffin handed me the gun. “Since you’re being so distracting, I’d feel better if you had some idea how to take care of yourself.”

It was heavy. I weighed it in my hand. “Isn’t the gun kind of a waste? I mean, it won’t kill someone with the serum.”

“You saw what happened to you when you got shot,” he said. “You were helpless for
minutes
. And every minute counts.”

I raised the gun. “I guess that’s true.”

“I’ll teach you some self-defense moves too,” he said. “But I want you to get used to having a gun in your hand. How’s it feel?”

“Heavy,” I said. “I didn’t think it would be so heavy.”

“Everyone says that.” He demonstrated. “That’s how you take off the safety, okay?”

I nodded.

“Show me,” he said.

I turned the safety on and back off again.

“Good,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Okay, first thing. You want to make sure that you’re holding the gun right. You want to place it squarely within the web of your thumb and forefinger, so that when you hold it out, it’s perfectly in line with your arm.”

I rearranged a little, holding the gun out. “Like this?”

He inspected and adjusted me. “Good. Like that. See how your thumb’s right here on the safety and your forefinger is extended right here?”

“Uh huh.”

“You’re not touching the trigger, but you could, right? Your finger’s right there.”

I nodded.

“Okay, bring up your support hand and wrap your fingers around your other hand.”

I brought up my other hand.

“You ever play basketball?”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “You’re asking because I’m tall, right?”

“You’re tall?” He kissed my forehead. “You’re short as far as I’m concerned.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Maybe in middle school. Why?”

“Well, when you’re shooting basketball, you’ve got a support hand, and it’s the same principle. You don’t want to let the support hand do anything other than support. If you rely too much on it, it’s going to throw your aim off.”

“Okay,” I said. I did kind of remember trying to shoot lay-ups and having my other hand push the ball the wrong direction. But I’d been twelve. I wasn’t sure how much the analogy was really going to help me.

He stood behind me, running his hands over my arms and shoulders.

“Ooh,” I said, wiggling my butt against him.

“Stop,” he said.

“What?”

“This is serious, doll.”

“I know. It’s seriously hot when you put your hands on me.”

He pushed on my shoulders. “Loosen up here. Square your shoulders, spread your legs.”

I couldn’t help it. I giggled. “Spread my legs, huh?”

“Leigh, I mean it, stop fooling around.”

Whoa. He’d called me by my first name. He was obviously in a bad mood. I stopped giggling.

“Feet shoulder length apart,” he said.

I moved my feet.

He walked around me, so that he was standing next to the gun. “Okay, you want to use the pad of your forefinger to push the trigger, not this inside knuckle. You see what I’m saying?”

I moved my finger and ran it over the trigger.

“Exactly like that,” he said. “Now take your finger off the trigger.”

I did.

“You see the target?” he asked.

The target was an empty marshmallow vodka bottle. I thought we were being a tad ambitious with something so small, but Griffin thought otherwise.

“Okay, you’ve got three posts to line up. Those are your sights. You see what I’m talking about?”

“Yeah.”

“The front post needs to be horizontally centered and vertically level with the rear posts. You line up the front post with the target, you line up the rear posts on either side of the front post, you look back at the front post, and then you pull the trigger.”

I bit my lip. “Um.”

“Try it,” he said. “Don’t pull the trigger. Just try lining up the posts.”

Once I had the gun aimed at the bottle, I saw what he was saying. Looking down the barrel, I could see the three sight posts. I did what he had advised. “Okay, I think I understand.”

“One more thing,” he said. “You’re holding your breath. You don’t want to do that. You want your body loose and relaxed. Breathe through it.”

I nodded.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Give it a shot.”

I squared my shoulders, took deep breaths, put the pad of my finger on the trigger, lined up my sights, and squeezed the trigger of the gun.

It kicked in my hands, I nearly dropped it. “Jesus!”

Griffin laughed at me.

“You could have warned me it was going to do that!”

“I thought you knew,” he said, still laughing. “I’m sorry.”

I peered at the intact vodka bottle. “I didn’t even come close, did I? I told you I wouldn’t be any good at this.”

“Loosen up. It was your first try. If you did well the first try out, you’d be exceptional. Practice, doll.”

My shoulders slumped.

We practiced.

Eventually, I did start shattering vodka bottles. My ratio wasn’t exactly great, though. I think I missed more than I hit. But Griffin said I was improving, and that was all that was important.

*

Saturday night was my one-month sober party at Stacey’s place. I was excited about it, even though she’d invited all these people who I didn’t know from other NA meetings. She said it would be cool for me to meet other addicts. I was a little nervous. I used to be really good at meeting people, but I didn’t know if I still was. How much of that had been me, and how much of it had been cocaine?

The morning of the party, I woke up alone in bed, which was strange, because I’d gone to sleep snuggled up against Griffin. We’d been sleeping in the same bed ever since camping, but we still weren’t doing the deed, just messing around. And he still wasn’t letting me touch him much. I knew Stacey was right, and I was going to have to talk to him about it, but I hadn’t. I couldn’t figure out quite how to bring it up. And it wasn’t as if things were going so badly, anyway. Griffin seemed happy, and he was making me
very
happy.

I got out of bed, put on some slippers, and padded out into the kitchen, where Griffin was busy dicing potatoes on the kitchen counter.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Well, I was going to make you breakfast in bed,” he said. “But you’re not in bed anymore.”

“Breakfast? You?” I said. “You cook?”

He grinned at me. “I cook quite well, thank you very much.”

“But why?”

“Because you’ve been sober for a month,” he said. “And I’m proud of you.”

“I could get back in bed,” I said.

*

I wound through bodies, my fingers entwined with Griffin’s, who was behind me.

His voice at my ear. “I don’t know about this, doll. I didn’t realize she was going to invite so many people. This isn’t cool.”

We were at Stacey’s house, and we’d arrived to find the party already in full swing. The driveway was glutted with cars. The house was packed full of people. As I’d predicted, I didn’t know any of them. “You think there are Op Wraith people here?”

“Probably not,” he said. “Probably I’m being paranoid and ruining your night.”

“It’s your job to be paranoid,” I said. “If you’re paranoid, I’m paranoid.”

He squeezed my hand. “You deserve to have fun.”

Stacey spotted me through the crowd. She was on the opposite side of the room, and she squealed. “You’re here, you’re here!”

I waved.

“Get your butt over here and have a Red Bull and vodka,” she said.

Griffin nudged me. “Go ahead. I’ll be watching.”

“But what if it isn’t safe?”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Have fun. Go nuts. Let me worry about it.” He let go of my hand.

I walked across the room to Stacey. She handed me a drink, and raised her glass. “To one month sober!”

I clinked against her glass. “To one month!”

I sipped my drink. I wasn’t sure if I should get too drunk. I looked around for Griffin and saw him in the corner, his face blank, his eyes alert. He said I should have fun, right? I took another drink.

*

I yanked off my strappy shoes. “I can’t dance in these anymore!”

Stacey and I had been dancing in the middle of the living room for a long time. I’d had three drinks in that time, although I’d had to stop it with the Red Bull. It made me feel too cracked out now that I didn’t get amped on blow.

She pointed at me. “You took off your shoes.” She pointed at herself. “I’m going to take mine off too.” She pulled off her shoes and flung them at the far wall.

Giggling, I threw mine too.

A new song started on the stereo.

Stacey cheered. “I love this song.”

“Me too.”

We started to dance again. There were other people dancing too, but they gave us a wide enough berth that we had the center of the room to ourselves. Stacey was fond of shaking her hips and tossing her bright red hair. I was much more of a bouncing dancer. I was always bopping on my toes.

The song finished.

Stacey threw her arms around me. “I love you, Leigh. I’m so glad I met you.”

“I’m so glad I met
you
. You’re the best. I love you too,” I said. “Thank you for my party.”

“Are you having fun?”

“The most fun ever!”

“Do you need another drink?”

I considered. “Maybe. But first I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Okay,” she said. “Meet me in the kitchen, and I will make you a... what do you want?”

“Maybe just beer?”

“Just beer?” She shook her head. “We’ll talk about this when you get there. Go pee.”

I scampered out of the living room and down the hall in my bare feet. The bathroom was occupied, so I slouched against the wall across from the door and waited.

When the door opened, I was completely shocked to see Benton, my dealer from Morgantown, coming out of the bathroom.

He was surprised too. “Leigh? What are you doing here?”