Chapter 37 Mat
Mat
The second hand on the kitchen clock clicks forward with the grating movement of a gear lever roughly being turned.
The minute hand remains infuriatingly stationary.
It’s been a long-ass week. Every week has been long since Trouble started coming around regularly.
The wait to see him again is unbearable.
It’s wearing me down, fraying the edges of me, leaving me singed and exhausted.
I think about him every second I’m awake.
I think about him so long and so hard that, eventually, I swear I can taste him.
I can taste the sweet musk of his skin. The taste of his mouth and his tongue.
There’s no way to describe it except to say it tastes like trouble.
I can hear his voice too, deep and hoarse, whispering filth in my ear, inviting me, inciting me, driving me crazy.
I see him too. When I close my eyes, he’s there with a quick flick of silky black hair and an exaggerated sway of his hips.
I see parts of him in every room he’s been in.
In the kitchen. In Will’s room. In mine.
I see him in the hallway, naked, as Will’s hands and mine strip him bare.
I see him walk to the bedroom, skin and flesh melded together by magic, moving to music only he can hear.
It starts out okay, I guess. After he leaves, I’m usually flying high as a fucking kite, and that feeling lasts for a day or two.
By the end of the weekend, I start getting antsy.
My skin becomes oversensitive and itchy.
My muscles and joints feel stiff and too tight like they’ve been flooded with an excess of lactic acid.
Trouble is so goddamn cagey, and it drives me insane.
He says he can’t do Friday or Saturday nights at our place because he has “a thing” on those nights, but he can’t be convinced to tell us what the thing is.
Every week I’m so worked up by Saturday night that I start thinking about going out to random gay clubs just to see if he’s there.
If it wasn’t for Will and his ability to see reason, I probably would have.
Last week, Will had a late meeting on Thursday, so we asked Trouble if he could come over on Wednesday instead of Thursday.
“I have a thing on Wednesday,” was all he said.
We have no idea what the thing is. Less than no idea.
When I think about it too much, I get really wound up. My teeth clench so tightly that I end up with a headache that spreads from my temples down the sides of my face. When it happens, I start asking Will too many questions to distract myself. I start making him guess what Trouble’s big “thing” is.
“It’s work, obviously,” he said yesterday, the third time I asked. His tone was exhausted.
I knew he was getting irritated with me. I could feel it, but I didn’t care. I know I’ll ask him again because I can’t help myself, and honestly, what do we really know about Trouble?
So far, all we know for sure is that he’s twenty-five years old, five foot nine, originally from Portland, and likes sundried tomatoes and True Blood.
Okay, okay, we also know a couple of things about his family and that he likes music and clothes and people with weird-colored hair.
Don’t think I haven’t been spending a ton of time wondering what I’d look like with teal-colored hair.
The other day Will caught me looking in the mirror and said, “Don’t even think about it. ”
But seriously, Trouble’s giving us nothing.
The talking game Will invented is hardly working at all.
He’s still cagey as hell. Every time he opens his mouth, I can feel him holding back.
Will told me years ago that he plays the game with new girlfriends.
He says it’s a good way to get to know people.
He and I have never played it together before. We’ve never had to.
The second to last time Trouble was here, he told us he likes texting over calling.
Can you believe that? Who the hell doesn’t?
I mean, what kind of animal likes being called?
What kind of fucking insight is that supposed to give us?
When we complained, he told us he hates going to the post office.
I kid you not. That’s what he said. What the hell are we supposed to do with that?
Said he absolutely hates it. Said there’s always a person working behind the counter who looks pissed off as hell that he's had the audacity to try to mail something.
“I almost fear it,” he said, baby blues blinking earnestly.
It was kind of adorable, actually. The way he smiled when he said it, all sheepish, like it was some deep, dark confession, made my chest feel hot and gooey.
Will started laughing and then gave me a stern look.
It was a warning. His mouth was a flat line, and his brows were drawn down low.
I could tell that if he’d spoken, the sound he’d have made would be more of a growl than a full sentence.
Will’s warning was the only reason I didn’t immediately offer to take care of all of Trouble’s post office needs for the rest of his natural life.
Will has warned me strenuously about that kind of talk.
He’s sat me down and warned me in words, and he’s warned me with looks: dark shadows over dark pupils, a laser-focused gaze fixed purposefully on me.
He warns me a lot about that kind of thing when I’m with girls too.
Says I fall too hard and too fast. Says no good ever comes of it.
To be fair, he’s always been right about it in the past when it comes to girls.
As the week wears on, I start feeling more jittery.
It’s a feeling that starts low in my belly and works its way up.
When it starts, I can’t tell if my body feels too loose or too tight, and by the time it gets to my chest, I know for sure it’s too tight.
Too snug and constricted. I start checking my phone compulsively, obsessively worried that Trouble will cancel.
I jump with dread every time my phone pings.
Dread quickly gives way to relief, followed by crushing disappointment when the message isn’t from Trouble.
And spoiler: the messages are hardly ever from Trouble.
Guess it’s good in a way. I’m shit-scared he’ll message to say he’s had his fun with us, and now he’s found someone else to have it with.
The thought of that drives me fucking insane, it plagues my nights, and recently, it’s started plaguing my days too.
I know it’s a me-problem, and I haven’t even told Will how I feel.
It’s crazy to think we have some kind of ownership over Trouble.
Obviously, I know we don’t. It would be insane to feel like that about anyone, but even more so for Trouble.
He’s wild and free and powerful in a way most people never come close to achieving.
Most people live their whole lives and never experience the amount of power Trouble has in his little finger.
It’s not something he learned, and it’s not something he was taught. It’s something he is.
I know I’m a problem when I get like this.
I have jealousy issues. I know it. I admit it.
It’s not something I’m proud of. I wasn’t always like this.
In fact, I wasn’t like this at all until Jade.
We were only together for four or five months when I was twenty, so I don’t know why it fucked me up so badly.
You’d think I’d be over it now because I’m sure as hell over her.
I was over her in a matter of days, but the trust issues seem to have stayed.
I guess it’s because I thought she was perfect.
I honestly thought she was the sweetest, most perfect girl on the planet while we were together.
Will tried to warn me about her, and all it did was piss me off.
It was probably the only time since I’ve known him that something he did really got under my skin.
I held what he said against him for days, struggling to look him in the eye and keep my voice neutral when I talked to him.
Still, when she cheated on me, he looked almost as upset as I felt, and he never once said I told you so.
I work on it a lot, and usually, I can talk myself down, but this feels different.
It’s big. It’s on a whole different level.
The kind of level that could crush me and break me apart.
The feeling I get when I think about Trouble being with someone else makes me feel like I could split down the middle with panic and fear.
I can’t bear the thought of anyone who isn’t us touching him.
I can’t let myself think it because just the thought of such a thing makes me feel like I’m going to lose it.
I can’t bear it. I can’t stand the thought of hands, mouths, or cocks that don’t belong to Will or me anywhere near him. It makes me boil and shake with rage.
I’ve never felt anything like it.
The last time Trouble was here, Will told us about how he lost his virginity to Lana Davis and how he felt about himself afterward—euphoric as fuck and then totally crushed afterward when she told him it had hurt.
He talked for ages about it. He went into detail about how it made him feel and how long it took to regain his confidence sexually.
How hard it was for him to get over the fact that his experience and hers were so different.
What bothered him the most was that he’d tried to be gentle.
He’d checked in with her and believed her when she said it felt good.
He said that for a long time afterward, it made it hard for him to trust his partners and to accept the part of himself that likes being dominant and rough.
His face was nestled into the pillow as he talked. His hair was a mess and his jaw lacked the tension it usually holds. He told us things he’s never told me before.
If you know Will at all, you’ll know that isn’t like him.