Chapter 10 – JINX #2
I sit at the vanity and start on my face.
Green contacts, obviously. They’re not quite her perfect emerald shade—they're more like Cyrus's—but they’re as close as I could get.
Foundation to smooth everything out. Eyeshadow in the same pink she bathed every surface she could touch in.
Lipstick in the same shade she uses. I know, because I stole a tube out of her makeup bag the same night I stole the sweatshirt and jerked off later in the shower knowing her lips had touched it, too.
Each stroke of the brush is a little too hard, punishment for everything I've already done and all the mistakes I'm about to make all over again tonight.
But it works. When I'm done, if you squint, if you're desperate enough, if you've had enough to drink or smoke...
"Fuck," I whisper to my reflection. "I am so fucked up."
When I emerge, Cyrus is waiting for me in that mood that only surfaces here. Darker. Hungrier. The flavor of dominant that would surprise anyone who knows him as the sarcastic hacker with a superiority complex.
I lean against the doorframe, one hip cocked. "How do I look?"
His eyes go black behind his glasses, pupils blown wide with want and that other thing. The thing we don't talk about. Can't talk about.
"Perfect," he says, and we both slip into pretending he's seeing someone else.
He crosses the room in three strides and grabs my arm, not gentle but not quite rough enough to bruise. The manhandling makes my cock leak precome in the lacy pink panties I'm wearing beneath the skirt.
"On your knees."
I drop immediately. The heels make it awkward but that's part of it. The discomfort. The wrongness. The desperate attempt to recreate something we never actually had.
His zipper sounds too loud in the quiet apartment. When he pulls his cock out, it's already hard, already leaking. The bar piercing above the head glistens in the dim light and my mouth waters like Pavlov's sluttiest dog.
"Open that whore mouth," he growls, and it's her name he's thinking even if he doesn't say it.
For him, this is punishment.
For me, it's worship.
But our jagged, fucked up pieces from where she left us raw and broken happen to fit together just right on such occasions.
I open wide, stick my tongue out the way I imagine she would. Eager but slightly defiant. Sweet but with an edge that could cut.
He doesn't ease in. Just grabs my hair—longer now, more like hers—and shoves deep. My throat contracts around him and I have to breathe through my nose to keep from gagging. The roughness makes me grind against nothing like the desperate whore I am.
"That's it," he mutters, setting a brutal pace. "Take it all, Princess."
The dirty talk is for her. The anger is for her. The hand in my hair pretending it's blonde with pink streaks instead of just blond.
It's all for her.
I hollow my cheeks and suck like my life depends on it. Let him use my throat like it's her he's fucking. Her he's punishing for leaving. Her he's trying to forget and remember all at the same time.
"Gonna come," he warns, hips stuttering. "And you're going to swallow it all. Every last fucking drop, and then lick it clean after."
He floods my mouth, hot and salty, and my throat works as I swallow reflexively. My own orgasm hits without warning, soaking the panties with shame and need and four years of desperately missing someone who probably doesn't even remember our names.
We stay frozen for a moment after I lick him clean. He’s still gripping my hair. I’m still on my knees. Both of us are pretending this is enough. That this sick approximation fills the Ellie-shaped hole in our chests.
"You okay?" His voice is different now. Gentler. Cyrus again instead of whoever he becomes in this room.
"Fine." The lie tastes bitter, but the taste of his salt on my lips makes it a little sweeter.
He helps me to my feet, and his hands are careful now. He touches my face with something almost approaching tenderness, thumb wiping at the smeared lipstick.
"Was I too rough?" he asks quietly.
I want to tell him it's never the sex that hurts. It's the after. It's the remembering.
It's the way her ghost haunts every corner of this apartment she's never even been in, every breath between us, every desperate attempt to feel something other than her absence.
"Cy, I—"
His phone buzzes, shattering whatever confession was building in my throat.
"Fuck." He pulls it out, and his expression immediately shifts to business. "It's Kade. Another job."
I sigh, raking a hand through my hair. "Of course it is."
He types quickly. "We'll be there in an hour."
"I should clean up."
I have fucking cum in my hair.
"Yeah." He's already pulling his pants up, switching back to the Cyrus everyone else knows. The one who doesn't need to pretend his best friend is someone else just to get off. "I'll wait in the car."
I head to the bathroom, avoiding my reflection.
I clean my face mechanically, watching her disappear down the drain along with the makeup before I pack the sweatshirt back in the wardrobe and toss the skirt and underwear in the washer-dryer.
Like I'm storing pieces of her for the next time we need this fix.
Because there will be a next time. There always is.
We're addicts, Cyrus and I. But our drug isn't something you can buy on a corner or cook in a trailer.
It's a girl who used to count to five when she was nervous. Who painted everything pink because she said the world needed more color. Who promised nothing would change and then changed everything.
Eleanor Riggs.
Ellie.
Our Princess who became someone else's queen.
I grab my real clothes and start getting dressed, trying to shake off the feeling that I'm putting on another costume. That maybe there is no real Jinx anymore either.
My phone buzzes. A text from Kade.
KADE
Where the fuck are you assholes?
That's more like it.