Telling Tales (6 page)

Instead I scan the lake, looking for Kitty and Cameron. And when I see her not a meter from us facing our way, while Cameron is off toward the center somewhere, swimming like a seal…I don’t know. I feel…satisfied, somehow.

I can concentrate, now, on the matter at hand: Wade chasing me until I feel like shrieking at him to just
fuck
off
. Just don’t, don’t. I’ve never liked being chased at the best of times and right now—with the freezing cold water and my clumsy swimming skills and him like some kind of Olympian—it’s worse.

And I have to admit, the suddenness of his sexual, flirting whatever-the-fuck is only contributing to this feeling. So much so that I actually shout back at him, “Don’t.”

But he just laughs and asks me what exactly I think it is he’s doing. Good question. I have no clue. Could you maybe put your answers on the back of a postcard, Wade? Could you not keep chasing me like this so I can think for a minute?

Only when I turn back, he’s not there anymore. I spit out a mouthful of probably panic-swallowed lake water, tasting weeds and that weird new-penny tang I remember so well. It’s in my eyes too, so I give them a swipe, trying to slow my breathing and acclimatize to the deep freeze as I do. There’s something about this lake’s coldness that isn’t like ordinary coldness—it’s a bone deep, silvery sort of thing that never goes away, not even in the height of summer.

My teeth are starting to chatter. We probably really are all going to die in a second.

And then Wade quite suddenly bursts out of the water, so close to me he could have run his tongue over my skin as he did so, and I think:
Did
I
say
die
in
a
second? Because I actually think I’m going to die right now.

I almost drown. At the very least I splutter and flap around and do my very best to get away, but all that makes him do is get me into a lifesaving sort of position. Which also happens to be—very conveniently—a take-you-from-behind sort of position.

He loops one arm around my shoulders—just above my breasts—and pulls my back to his front, and the minute he does so my treacherous brain stops thinking
What
an
asshole
and starts thinking
Oh
Lord, he’s so warm
. As though warmth is a state that promotes perpetual forgiveness, somehow.

“Just relax,” he says, as though I’m struggling. Much to my embarrassment, however, I’m actually not. I just lie limp in his arms like half a pound of soggy seaweed, extremely aware of every little part of him like the dark hair on his forearms and his bicep squeezing hard into my shoulder and his breath all hot against the side of my face.

There’s also something I think I can feel when I cycle my legs through the water. Something I don’t really want to think about too hard because it’s both explosively exciting and somehow…not right at the same time. I mean, he did have sex with my best friend last night. And even if he hadn’t done, it’s Wade we’re talking about.

He shouldn’t have an erection. He just shouldn’t be hard against the curve of my ass and, even if he has to be, I know he shouldn’t be rubbing it over my body. I can feel him doing it and, though it sends an answering tingle of pleasure through my sorely neglected sex, it doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Can’t we admit some sort of long held but silent crush, first? That’s the way things should be done. He has to get down on one knee and weep and tell me he’s sorry for never telling me how much he loved me, and then I swoon. And
then
we get to the sex part.

Though even the above seems appallingly unrealistic. This is just…out of the realms of sanity. He’s rubbing his cock against my ass, for God’s sake. And he doesn’t stop there either. No, no—after a moment of very obvious and very heated rubbing, he whispers in my ear:

“Why didn’t you come to my room last night?”

In this crooning, pleading sort of voice. For a moment, I’m sure he means
Why
didn’t you come in and have a threesome with us?
and my mind briefly explodes, but then he continues down a different route altogether.

“I was just waiting for you, Allie-Cat. And then Kitty came along and…well…”

I want to shove him away at that. I really, really want to. But then he slides his hand down over the bit of chest just before the swell of my tits, and I forget what words are. I can’t even think straight—what is he saying, exactly? That he wanted me but made do with Kitty? Pretty gross whichever way you look at it and yet somehow I’m not finding it gross. Or at least, my body’s not reacting as though it’s finding anything gross.

My sex swells against the tight confines of my swimming costume, and when his hand passes over the upswell of my left breast, I have to fight not to moan. How long have I dreamt of something like this happening? So long it’s like a constant thrum through my pathetic, too-weak body.

And yet, when I close my eyes and drift into the feel of Wade’s touch, I see Cameron behind my eyes. I feel his hand sliding over my back as he hugged me and his eyes burning into mine as though he had something to say, something really important.

But worse than that I think about him jerking off, desperately, and sensation gushes thick and strong between my legs. My nipples are stiff when Wade finally, finally brushes over one of them, and I don’t think it’s because of the water. I’m not even sure if it’s because of Wade.

“God,” he says, when I can’t help pushing into his touch. When I can’t stop the little sigh from escaping my lips. “Why didn’t we ever fuck in college? You’re so hot, baby.”

He’s pinching my nipple now. And then even worse he slides his hand underneath the clingy material, over the slick, cool flesh of my right breast. I won’t deny—it feels amazing. His hand is somehow scalding hot and the contrast is like touching a live wire.

Plus there’s the utter
rudeness
of it. We’re out in the open—Kitty and Cameron only a few meters away—and he’s cupping and fondling my bare breast. He’s rubbing his cock against my ass and whispering in my ear and oh, I can’t help squirming in his arms. It’s not my fault, though—I just need to come so badly! I should have done it the night before, I know I should have, but now it’s too late. I just need to come here, now.

And the need gets stronger when he says: “Is this doing it for you, huh? You like it?”

Because all I can think of is all the things I do like, and none of them are Wade. Instead I think about Cameron coming all over his own hand, making a slick and dirty mess that I just want to lick up. In fact, I go one step further than that—I imagine Cameron doing it all somewhere dirtier, like all over my face, while Wade keeps right on stroking and pulling at my nipple.

And it’s so good I’m sure I’m going to come. Just from that little shred of stimulation. Just with him moaning in my ear and the idea of Cameron somewhere to the left of us—so close I could probably see him if I just opened my eyes.

“I have to go back to the house.”

I blurt it out without thinking, but once it’s there it feels right. I need to get away from him; I need this to not be happening. If he wanted it to happen so badly he could have waited for me to come to him the night before.

It’s too late now. And though the thought makes a dart of pain go through me, I can cope with it. I can cope with it so hard that when he shouts after me
Allie, Allie
in this confused sort of voice, I just keep right on going. I swim for the shore and then I climb out of the water, not even bothering to wrap a towel around myself in any sort of reasonable don’t-die-of-flu fashion.

The house isn’t that far anyway. Though when I get there I realize three things automatically—I’ve got mud streaked all the way up to my thighs, my lips have turned blue, and Wade did not follow me.

I’m not sure which of these is the most troubling. The blue lips, probably, though they disappear after five minutes in the shower. And the mud goes easily enough too, which just leaves the thought of Wade not following me—though this alarmingly seems to fade as quickly as the other things did.

Instead I find myself standing in the middle of the beige-y room I chose, with the pleasant but bland seascape above the bed and the window that looks out onto nothing, thinking about the Mystery of Cameron. Which I suppose is understandable, really, considering that it is an actual mystery. I didn’t just put mystery before his name like some dumb joke Wade would make.

He just
is
one.

And it’s this thought that makes me go down the hall and stand in the middle of his room, instead of my own. I’m sure it is. It’s not really anything inside myself, because I’m not a spying sort of person. Honestly I’m not. It’s just the thought of a mystery making me, as though this isn’t an episode of
Scooby-Doo
at all.
Scooby-Doo
is too tame and PG for the likes of this. This is an episode of
Poirot
with real actual bonking in it, and we’re all here in the country mansion to figure out who secretly tried to kill Cameron with some sort of sex drug.

Because reasonably, that’s the only explanation for what he was doing. I mean, just look at this room of his! He’s given his bed hospital corners. He’s set up some kind of immense computer station on the mahogany dresser by the door, complete with books perpendicular to the corners of this makeshift desk and eleven monitors and everything humming like the machine out of
The
Fly
.

He’s just not a very sexual being. He doesn’t give off a sexual energy. He gives off the energy of someone who has twenty computers and lines up his trainers by the door to the walk-in closet as though there’s an invisible barrier preventing them from moving an inch out of skew.

I feel dirty just sitting in front of the flickering monitors, in only a towel. I feel illicit, like I shouldn’t be in here, inside his inner sanctum. His books have titles I don’t understand, like
Operating
Parameters
of
a
Twelve-Bit MDOS
and
Bits
and
MDOS
Ride
Again
, and the corners of them are all curled as though he’s devoured their pages many, many times.

This
is the stuff he’s avaricious about. Operating parameters. MDOS. Control, Alt, Delete. I mean, the keyboard in front of me is missing the letter “A,” for God’s sake. He’s spent so much time hammering at it that the letter “A” has actually rubbed off.

I have absolutely no idea why I imagined he has some kind of secret sexual inner life. Clearly whatever he was doing the night before was just a one-off, a little letting off of steam after hearing Wade read out that filthy story. He’s probably actually gay for Wade, and his immense computer-bashing brain just couldn’t take hearing the object of his lust talking about willies and fannies and the like.

In fact, the most prevalent image I have of Cam is him sitting in front of a screen, the blue light backwashing over his strange, still face. Everything around him dark and cave-like, as he performs some miracle of computing that I can’t even comprehend. Kitty says he mostly designs websites and things like that now, but I know he invented something too. Some kind of interfacing site or programmable network or, Jesus Christ, I don’t know.

I also don’t know why I’ve never asked him. Of course, there’s that clichéd idea of him, that image of him boring girls to death at parties with all of his see-DOS-run talk, but the truth is I can’t remember ever finding Cam dull.

He’s not dull, at all. I mean—just look. He’s got a copy of my favorite book, buried underneath the stack of tech manuals.
Tehanu
, by Ursula Le Guin. And it’s all worn with the ridiculous swirling purple right-out-of-the-seventies cover, just like the one in the library at Pembroke.

Only then I realize it
is
the copy from Pembroke. The exact one. I open it up and the spine creaks and the pages almost fall out, and there’s my handwriting on page two hundred-something, in the margin after Tenar has told Ged that she’s loved him from the first time she saw him:
There
is
a
secret
place
in
my
heart
for
you. It’s with my secret name, the one I will not tell you.

I flush red, thinking of all the stupid, childish poetry I probably wrote back then. About how many people have seen my stupid, childish poetry and my ridiculous thoughts, in the margins of a book about freedom and feminism. Here it is, right here: evidence that I always latch onto some idiotic notion of love, rather than anything more important or interesting.

I’m lost in a love that doesn’t exist. That will never exist.

It doesn’t even exist in this story I’m holding in my hands, this beautiful but brittle story by a real storyteller. I flick through and it’s just as amazing as I remember it being, and I can still recall exactly how it made me feel, when the dragon came and Tehanu made everything all right again. Tehanu being the heroine, all along—just a little girl, really.

I flick right to the end pages to read it over again, but I don’t get to the words. I don’t get to the part when the dragon comes. Instead, I find what Cam has sandwiched between Ged and Tenar almost dying and Tehanu saving them. He’s put a picture in the book—he must have put a picture in the book, because I never left one in it. And he has the thing now, so he must know it’s there.

Of course he knows it’s there. It’s his handwriting on the back of it. I recognize it after all this time—all those big looping letters, as though he had to put on the page what he could never be in real life. He couldn’t be big and extrovert in reality, so he had to be in his writing.

And he is, he is. Because it’s a picture of me—one I have no memory of—and on the back he’s written
Tenar
. He’s written
Tenar
.