No Matter What You Do

6. Never to be Spoken ofThought of Again

Iarrive at the party a whole hour later than its start time.

I step in. All eyes are on me. I am wearing a glowing, sparkling red dress that barely covers my cleavage and a pair of gold flats. Not very matchy, but not a soul seems to care. All around, the faces of people I don”t know are smiling at me. Not just that but admiring me.

Before I can make it fully into the room, several people approach me.

“Oh my God, Lainey. You look so good,” they say.

My eyes focus on one face in the crowd. Beautiful brown hair. Light hazel eyes. He draws near, and his features become clear. There’s not a single thing I”d change. Everything is perfectly proportioned and placed.

I say nothing, and neither does he. He just takes my hands and leads me away from the overfill of peopleinto an empty bedroom. The lights are dimmed. I can’t see, but this mysterious man leads me onto the bed. I scooch into the middle of it and let him crawl on top of me. As he nears, the scent of vanilla and cherry wraps around me, filling the space between us.

He kisses me. I return it with force.

We fit together perfectly, and I am surprised I have this much passion inside me.

His tongue parts my lips, and we melt into each other.

He then moves to my neck, down to my chest, past my stomach. He pulls my dress up. His warm hands grip my thighs, and a burning heat fills me.Bliss. I watch his head disappear between my legs, and my back arches because of whatever he is doing to me down there with his mouth.

No part of me is anxious or nervous about what is happening. It’s like I”ve done this enough times to completely becalm about it.

The man does something with his fingers, andan amazing sensation rises inside me. Oh my God! Don’t stop! Please.

Pleasure rises inside me, and I grip the bed covers for dear life. Faster. He goes faster.

“Open your eyes,” he says.

I do as I’m toldjust as I reach my climax, and the face before me transforms into someone recognizable, and Cameron gives my body more pleasure than I ever thought possible.

Cameron.

Cameron?!

Cameron gets back on top of me as the feeling slowly fades.

God help me.

A screeching alarm pulls me from this fever dream, and my eyes fly open.

I shut off the blaring sound and stare at the wall. Brandy is dead asleep.

There is no way I just had an interactive sex dream about Cameron. I tuck that dream into a file cabinet in my head titled “Never to be Spoken of or Thought of Again.”

I hop out of bed and pull out a piece of loose paper. I scribble a few words on it: Kiss someone, Have sex, Have someone go down on me. Experiment?

I get to class minutes before ten. Middle-aged Professor Novak shoots me a warning glance. I resist the urge to defend myself because I’m not late, and I take a seat in the back row of the room.

He begins speaking right as my butt touches the chair. We are to split up into pairs and discuss impactful quotes. Two quotes each. Then he wants us to switch and analyze the other person’s quotes. “I want a hard copy by next class,” he says.

I quickly take a look around and friends are already claiming each other as partners silently. Some of the faces around me I’ve seen before at orientation, but I’m not really in the non-spoken-communication stage with any of them. And the only person I do know, Mikey, is already unavailable.

The person to my right is taken. The person to my left is too. No one is behind me, and the spot in front of me is vacant. Oh boy.

When Novak reaches his desk, he claps to get our attention. “By the way, I want one page on each quote.”

There is a soft knock at the open door, and I look up. I am surprised to see Tamara in the entryway. “Sorry I’m late, professor,” she starts sweetly. “A bit of a personal issue this morning.” He gives her a nod, then returns his attention to the paper in front of him. I pull out a notebook and open up to a blank page.

“Take a seat and pick a partner. They should be able to fill you in on the rest of the assignment,” he says to his desk.

She scans the room quickly, and a smile forms on her face when she spots me. Tamara walks up to the vacant seat in front of me and sits. “I didn’t know you were in this class. I was just added in,” she whispers.

Inspiration floods Tamara’s face as I fill her in. She digs in her bookbag and pulls out a book filled with multicolored stickies poking from every direction.

“All right.” She places it on her desk. “This baby right here is my favorite novel ever, and I’ve marked every single quote I found interesting. So, this should be easy.”

I quickly glance at the cover. Familiar white-and-orange design. “The Catcher in the Rye is your favorite…ever?”

She shrugs. “Is that judgment in your voice?” She shuts her eyes and flips through the book, stopping at a random page. She places a finger somewhere on the page and opens her eyes. “Nice,” she says to herself. She writes whatever quote she landed on in her notebook and repeats the process one more time.

Seeing as I have no heavily annotated novels in my backpack, I have to rely on the Internet for my quotes. Once I have gathered two quotes, I write them down, and Tamara and I exchange papers.

There is one big difference between our papers. Our handwriting. While mine looks like it was written by a four-year-old, hers is neat and elegant.

We both work individually for the rest of class to analyze our quotes. When Novak dismisses us, I close my assignment into my notebook.

Tamara and I walk out of class together.

“You wanna get lunch?” she asks.

“Yeah, definitely.”

She tucks some hair behind her ear. “Perfect.” She reaches for the phone in my hand and inserts her contact information into it. “I might as well give you a way to contact me about future meals,” she chuckles. A strange relief runs through my veins and relaxes muscles I had no idea were even tight. One thing I wanted coming into college was to make friends who were good for me. Kylie and I were always close. Literally. We lived near each other, went to the same middle school. I might have considered her my best friend, but I was never hers. She had so many others by her side who were more like her. She was nice enough to me, but some—possibly overthinking—part of my mind comes to a new conclusion. It has been years since I had another girl want to be my friend because of my personality and not simply proximity.

She hands me back my phone. “Shall we?”