Chapter 19 Consider Yourself
Chapter 19
Consider Yourself
I knew what I hoped for on our drive home, but I didn’t actually know what to expect. What I got was “Hello, Dolly!” blasting through the stereo, an ice-cold can of Diet Coke waiting for me in the cupholder, and very little conversation as Chloe followed the 101 down the coastline, through the Valley, and back to Silver Lake.
“Where are you going?” I asked, when Chloe passed up the 5.
“My place,” she said as if that had always been the plan. I decided not to ask questions because, honestly, the order of drop-offs was a very small concern to me compared to everything else that had happened over the course of the last two days.
She parked behind her building and gestured toward her apartment. “You’re coming up?”
“Am I?” I asked, but I followed because I couldn’t think of a better thing to do that didn’t involve a heartfelt conversation I didn’t have the nerve to start. Inside it was quiet without the sound of Fernando dashing around and barking seemingly indiscriminately out the window, but Chloe turned the show tunes playlist back on and that meant that it was “Consider Yourself” from Oliver! playing when she walked up behind me and swept my hair aside before kissing the back of my neck.
I knew what I should have done, as a person who’d had some therapy and also followed a lot of therapy meme accounts. Two steps forward from Chloe’s lips and then a real conversation to clear up what, exactly, this was. But what I did was lean back into it, fitting my ass against her hips. Her kisses grew sharper and her teeth scraped the nape of my neck while she gripped my hips. We ground against each other as her teeth sank into my tender skin, and I’d never felt so grateful for not starting a conversation.
“I’ve been dying to get you in my room,” Chloe said, guiding me with her hand urgently at the small of my back, through her apartment to her bedroom. “I kept thinking about fucking you in my bed.”
I felt myself pause, sorting out what this meant after—well, there were so many afters .
“What?” Chloe asked.
“I’ve been thinking about it too,” I said instead of what I should have said. Though of course these particular thoughts had been mixed between the other ones, of wondering if it was all already over before it had really even started for real. Unless Bianca was right and it had been real the whole time. Wouldn’t I have known?
Now, though, that all seemed far away. Nothing seemed bigger than the knowledge that Chloe had been thinking about me, thinking about me here, thinking about me in her bed.
Chloe slipped her brightly striped crop top off over her head before pulling off my dress in one slick move. “Fuck, look at you.”
“Look at you ,” I said, unbuttoning her jeans, feeling a million miles away from anything that wasn’t this. “Is this how you pictured it? When you thought about me here?”
“It’s a good start.”
She walked me toward her bed, but I pushed back against her. “I’m always first,” I said, though I wished I hadn’t said always , this was only our third hookup after all. “I want you first this time.”
“Clementine, you don’t have to—”
“I want you first this time,” I repeated.
Her eyes flashed with what I knew was hunger, but since I knew she’d want to try to talk me out of it anyway, I kept going. Chloe back against the wall with her jeans and boy shorts down and my face between her legs.
Even at this new angle, I felt more confident this time, like Chloe was all I needed to consume in order to survive. It was the first chance that we’d truly been this alone together, no fellow hotel room guests one room away, no one outside a closet door; Chloe’s enthusiastic sounds told me she was as aware of our privacy as I was.
“This isn’t sustainable,” Chloe said, her hands in my hair. “Let’s move into the bed, yeah? You’re gonna need physical therapy if you stay like that until I come.”
“It’d be worth it,” I murmured into her inner thigh, but dutifully waited for Chloe to pull back her comforter and sheets and climb into bed. I sat at her feet but she pulled me toward her, and in a flash turned over me to grab the headboard with both hands.
“Oh,” I said, throbbing at the thought of what I realized was about to happen. “Are you going to—”
“Sit on your face?” she asked with a grin. “Only if you want me to, Clementine.”
“Did you picture this?” I asked before she settled herself on top of me. My entire body shook at the overwhelming heat of it all; it was tough to remember anything I’d ever experienced that was as hot as Chloe on top of me right then.
“I pictured a lot of things,” she said, moving her hips slowly at first. I wondered if one could pass out from someone else’s pleasure. “Mainly you, though, not me. How’d you talk me into this, Clementine?”
I paused just a moment to make my point. “I don’t feel like I had to do much convincing.”
“No, I was an easy sell today— fuck , just like that. Yes .”
It felt like the rest of the world had been blotted out. There was nothing left except for Chloe’s pleasure. I could tell she was trying to hurry up for my sake, so I slowed things down, doing what I could to make her feel safe enough to take the time she needed. The time she wanted. By now I knew exactly how her breath hitched, how taut tension filled her body, how she cried out when her release was close, and so I knew just the right moment to push her all the way over the edge and feel her explode above me.
“That was some real queer 201 shit,” she said in a ragged voice, lying beside me. “You’re leveling up—don’t look so smug.”
“I’m not smug ,” I said, even though I was, again, a little. More than a little. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. What couldn’t the two of us do together?
Chloe leaned over to her nightstand and riffled through the drawer. “I pictured this too. You into it? No pressure, genuinely.”
I nodded at the harness, glittery purple strap-on, and lube, though hopefully not so eagerly I looked deranged. “I’m into it—I mean, the thought of it. You know it’s all firsts for me.”
“But you’ve been researching,” Chloe said with a laugh as she turned away from me to get ready. “How-to guides. Porn?”
“Oh, yeah, plenty of porn,” I said. “I didn’t want to seem like an idiot when I got into this situation.”
“Well,” Chloe said, kneeling in front of me and nudging my thighs open, “mission accomplished, Clementine.”
I let out a sharp gasp as she entered me, and we watched each other as we moved together, rough almost from the beginning. I’d been so ready for her that I only made it a few moments before crying out in almost shocked bliss. We kept going, of course, because we were just getting started. We switched positions, me on top, her behind me, up against the wall again. Finally, back in her bed, she held my gaze with hers as she moved in an agonizingly slow rhythm. Every nerve in my body trembled for her, but this time I waited. This time I wanted it to go on as long as possible.
“I pictured it,” she said soft and low, and I felt it start, the rumble through my entire system, “just like this.”
I cried out as I let go of everything, arching into her as waves of pleasure quaked through me. Had I ever felt like this? It seemed impossible.
“You’re very good at that,” I told Chloe when I could breathe again. “Look as smug as you want.”
She grinned at me. “Yeah, yeah. It was a team effort.”
I laughed at that, pressing my face into her shoulder. I wasn’t into cuddling, per se, but I also found her very hard to resist. “If we keep playing like this, we’ll definitely win the playoffs.”
“All the way to nationals,” she said. “Man, sports metaphors aside, we should have started the lessons way sooner.”
I didn’t like the way she said lessons but my brain was still a swirly mess of post-orgasm chemicals so I decided not to push it.
“Think how good you’ll be for the first real girl,” Chloe continued, and that snapped my brain right out of it.
“Why would you say that?” I asked softly. “I thought we—”
“Oh,” Chloe said, raising her eyebrows. “Man, I did know better than to get into this with a baby gay, but here we are—”
“ No ,” I said, sharper than I realized I would. “Don’t say that like an asshole. Because you’re not an asshole, and also because you must know I’m not that na?ve, and I don’t think something changed just because we had sex. The way we’ve been talking—the things we’ve said—”
“We have the whole arrangement between us,” she said. “And we’re also attracted to each other, sure. It doesn’t have to be more than that.”
“But … but it could be,” I said gently. “I mean, I like this. I like you. And not because of the way you just made me scream—well, not just that. And I think that you—maybe you also … I think we’re good together, and—I don’t know. We’re already kind of doing this. Maybe we just don’t put an end date on it?”
“I told you that I don’t date,” she said.
“Yeah, and you also told me people don’t want you for who you really are, and that you’re not worth waiting on, and also that some girl did weird stuff with her feet to you—”
“I mean, they were cold, it was fine,” she said.
“You know what I’m saying, Chloe. That maybe it didn’t work out before for you, but I’m not them.”
“I’m great alone,” she said.
“I never said you weren’t.”
“No, but you’re like them,” she said, jabbing her finger into the air to indicate them . “You think you can’t really be happy unless you have someone, and even if you’re qualifying that as a partner and not a wife or husband, it’s all the same thing. You alone is incomplete. And I think that’s bullshit , Clementine, because I’m doing great, and you were too. We don’t need this.”
I couldn’t believe this was the conversation we’d found our way into, only moments after what we’d just done together. I knew that, even though it had yet to happen to me, that I was capable of having emotion-free sex, physical pleasure only. I was also practically positive that it hadn’t been that with Chloe at all.
“No, I didn’t say we did, just—”
“You’re the one talking about how you don’t want to die alone,” Chloe said, and I almost felt like I was imagining things because it felt like such a terrible thing to say, much less at a time like this. “I’ve got news for you, though. Unless just the most tragic shit happens, we’re all gonna die alone.”
“OK, fine,” I said, getting up and pulling on my bra before slipping back into my dress. Having this conversation mostly naked couldn’t be making anything better. “I think you understand it’s a turn of phrase, but, fine.”
“This doesn’t even have anything to do with me,” she said. “You’re so afraid to be by yourself that you’re trying to make this work, when I told you from the start it never would. Time’s about up and you’re panicking.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Just because I want to find someone and fall in love forever doesn’t make me an idiot. It doesn’t mean I can’t tell how I feel about you.”
“You know, I actually thought that doing this would make me feel better around my friends,” Chloe said. “Finally equal in their eyes or whatever. But instead I had to hear all this shit, like everyone at the wedding being all, oh it’s so great you have Clementine . Like I’m so much better off, you know. Me alone can’t cut it.”
“Your friends know you can cut it,” I said. “You cut it great.”
“You barely know them,” she said. “Maybe they don’t think that at all.”
“They’re just happy for you,” I said, hoping she wasn’t right about that, at the very least. Of everything she’d said so far, somehow it cut the deepest.
“I’ve done so many things since I’ve known them,” she said. “Gotten my MBA. Started my own business. I ran a half-marathon once! And when are they over-the-moon happy for me? When I’ve got a girlfriend.”
“I don’t think it’s like that,” I said softly.
“After I had surgery, it was all the same shit, thank god you had Clementine . But the thing was that I thought I had them already. I didn’t need you.”
“I’m not saying you do.” I shook my head. “You know what, I don’t know what I’m doing. There’s probably not a lot of things more humiliating than trying to convince someone she likes me while she’s saying that she doesn’t. I’m going to get a Lyft.”
“Don’t get a Lyft,” she said, frantically getting dressed. “I’ll take you home.”
“Fine.” I walked out of her bedroom and waited at the door for her. On the ride home I thought about how I’d known better when we got back to her place today than to let her kiss me instead of having a conversation, but I’d still done it anyway. I’d led myself right to my own heartbreak.
In my condo I tried not to cry as I lavished attention on Small Jesse Pinkman. Maybe Chloe was right and nothing had actually changed. Maybe I was a na?ve baby gay who’d let some orgasms convince me something bigger had happened. Maybe after some sleep in my own bed I’d see it all more clearly.
But when my alarm went off Monday morning, nothing felt clear at all, and the only person I wanted to hear from hadn’t reached out. However real or fake it was, the one thing I was certain of was that now it was over.