Chapter 14
MY HAND HOLDS LEANA’S hair back as she goes down on me.
Everything’s still fresh enough that I can easily remember what that feels like.
The last time I touched her was only, what?
Hours ago? Tonight’s got my sleeping all erratic, only getting ninety, thirty minutes even at a time.
The sun will be up in a couple hours at this point.
I figure I might as well see if letting some needs be met tires me out at all. Or, at the very least, my brain.
I imagine her coming up for air, kissing her, flipping us over so I’m lying on top of her.
My fingers playing with her exactly how she likes while her hands are all over me, scratching at my back, my arms. I think about what it feels like to be in her, hearing how her breathing goes wild and she moans my name.
Except that’s not Leana’s voice. That’s not her moan.
I look up and see short, dark brown hair and wavy bangs. Pretty eyes and the prettiest smile. Lips I haven’t kissed in real life since that Saturday in some fraternity house backyard. I hear a quiet, needy “Gabi” leave his mouth, sounding so clearly like him.
And I keep going.
I could shake Vale away. I could stop for two minutes and go to one of the tabs I keep open on my phone, replace him with another face.
A girl’s face. But, instead, I think about how good that kiss was.
I think about kissing him again while I’m rearranging his insides.
Him bent in half underneath me. Breathy moans coming out of our mouths as he tells me, “Right there,” and “I’m so close,” and “Gabi.” It’s got me feral. So close too. And I can’t help it. I—
“Fuck.”
As I wipe myself clean and toss the damp hand towel on the floor, my brain’s even more wired than it was before I tugged down my underwear and started beating my meat.
Instead of knocking me out, I’m stuck in a limbo that’s somewhere between post-nut relaxation and fully losing my mind because— because Vale .
I’ve had dreams about guy friends. And I’ve had dreams about guy friends where I’m fully blowing their backs out.
Who hasn’t? Right? It would’ve been easier if this was a dream.
I can’t control my dreams. Instead, I was wide awake, and I chose to let Vale stay because …
because it felt good. Definitely not any worse than when it was his best friend in my head.
And I’m vulnerable right now. Obviously my post-breakup horny brain, as bored as it was and as pent up as I was in the moment, went to the easiest solution: to think about the last person I talked to.
If P é rez had stayed and we ended up playing video games, I’d probably have imagined blowing his back out while he was dressed like Wonder Woman.
So it’s whatever that it felt good. That I maybe liked what was happening there. Liked it enough to bust a nut over it.
“It doesn’t … it’s whatever,” I mutter to myself as I fall back on my mattress and stare at the ceiling. “It’s whatever. Everything’s fine. I’m just tired.”
“Are you confused?”
My head perks up so fast my neck pops. I’m not sure how long I was out this time. “What?”
“You look even more lost than when we started. Also, you—” Vale grabs at the big bowl of fruit I’d been keeping to myself while we study, taking it away from me and sliding it to the far end of the table while I let out a whiney “ My brain food .”
Damn this kitchen island being so big that I can’t reach back for it.
“You’re, like, stress eating right now.”
“I’m not, I just … This shit’s the worst. No offense. Proud of you for being good at it, but me and this class are still not on good terms.”
He laughs, and I can’t help but smile at his smile.
Watch as he hops off his stool and walks around to the fridge.
Watch more as he bends over to get the jug of sweet tea out.
I try my best not to spend these seconds staring at his ass (and I fail almost immediately), thinking about how, even in my imagination, it felt so good to be in—
“Well, start talking to me. Tell me all the things,” Vale says, making me jump on my stool. Thankfully he’s too busy putting ice into his cup to have seen me. “What makes you hate this cave?”
“I, uh … oh . I mean, first of all—” I clear my throat, giving myself a chance to kick out the horny thoughts and get my head out of my ass (or, more so, Vale’s ass). “How are they eating?”
“I—” Vale stares at me for entire seconds, frozen holding on to that jug of tea. “What?”
“No, really. This was something the Spunk-ass cave story made sure to cover, so I feel like it has to be important here. If they can’t move, they’ve got to be getting fed somehow, right?
Especially because it sounds like they’ve been there for a while, unless they’re still kids, which I’m assuming isn’t the case.
That’d be weirder for a lot of different reasons than this story already is.
But this guy never considered how everyone’s supposed to eat.
Which, honestly, shatters this whole idea immediately. ”
“Does it, though?”
“Also, what about going to the bathroom? Does it just smell like fucking wild levels of shit down there? And, if so, those people carrying the stuff and talking at them don’t care about the violent piles of shit?
Was someone assigned to feed them and then clean their poop? Doesn’t that person get noticed?”
Vale takes another few seconds of silence with his lips sucked in now, trying his best not to laugh. Even though I’m so serious about this.
“You spent a lot of time thinking about how they poop, didn’t you?”
“ Well, yeah! This guy, Socrates—”
“Plato, but continue.”
“Is the person everyone sees as one of the inventors of philosophy but couldn’t even remember that people take dumps.
Also, you can’t tell me that these guys who can’t turn their heads but can use their hands and arms haven’t circle jerked.
Or, like, line jerked. They’ve jacked off to some of those shadows.
They had a favorite. A couple that really do it for them. ”
Vale is looking at me like I’ve just broken him. But this is what he’s asked for. He’s the one who’s volunteering to help me survive this class. Not that I don’t appreciate that, but this is part of it. Deep discussions on Ancient Greeks and the ancient art of beating meat and pooping.
“Is that important to know?”
“No, but, like, it’s an obvious thing. Because they’re all naked.”
“ How do you know that , Caca Head?”
“Otherwise, they’re constantly shitting their pants, and I think you’d rather just believe they’re naked instead of carrying around all the poop they’ve ever pooped.”
He lets out a defeated sigh as he sits back down.
“Okay. Sure. I’ll give you that.” And then he reaches for a couple grapes in the bowl, putting them both in his mouth before looking at his laptop.
“But now that we’ve got those thoughts out, I think, when you actually take some time with it, you might realize this one could have a lot of meaning for you.
Not that what you’ve said doesn’t have meaning.
I promise, somewhere out there, someone’s like, ‘Yes, he gets it.’ But maybe we move on to the real ideas Coolidge wants us to consider. ”
“Okay, h á blame. What am I missing?”
“It’s all about being prisoners to our own social incapability to accept new information.”
“And nothing to do with pooping?” I tease, laughing when a grape hits my nose, catching it and quickly putting it in my mouth.
“You’re not allowed to mention anything poop-related for the next half hour.
Think, okay? Knowledge, things like justice, science, equity, these didn’t always exist. And, when you consider the whole history of humanity, we’ve rarely been the type to see these and say, ‘Yeah, this looks great actually; I will embrace them and not gaslight anyone about them.’ Think about how much math wouldn’t exist if a few people hadn’t broken out of their chains, left their caves, and realized they could think and add and multiply and all that.
Or how much further we’d be if ninety-nine percent of people, and by that I mean the Catholic Church, didn’t see someone explain algebra or science and say, ‘Oh, no thanks, that’s witchcraft and you need to die. ’ ”
“So the point is that learning hurts and people would rather be assholes than be educated or open-minded?”
“Hurts, is scary, sometimes asks us to believe truths that make us uncomfortable.” Vale puts up a finger for each, stressing his points.
“And so a lot of times we just ignore it and prefer to focus only on what’s right in front of us.
On what’s easiest and, a lot of times, on what keeps powerful people in power. ”
“Like with the other cave,” I say, a (dim) lightbulb turning on in my brain.
“How a whole group of guys died because one person was too scared to go against what’s in front of him.
All those judges were kind of like cave prisoners, right?
So focused on what was illegal or legal, they keep themselves in chains and are fine there.
They never realized they could have empathy or think for themselves about what justice means. ”
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Vale smile as big as he is right now as he nods. “Exactly. Yeah. Look at you. Maybe you don’t need me as much as you think you do.”
“Nah, not true.”
“Well, you are getting it. You’re wishing there could’ve been just one person who got out of his chains. And you’re thinking about how that makes everything that comes after different and better.”
“But he just gets chained back up in the end.”
“Change and growth are hard. Staying where you’re comfortable is easy. And making sure everyone stays there with you, well, there are a lot of people out there who would gladly be that person.”