Chapter 1
Lindsey
There were reasons for my generalized hatred; not all of them were good reasons, but they were reasons.
One, I was seconds away from starting my period, but it just wouldn't fucking start, and it was making me feel stabby, like a gory version of a stuck sneeze but in my vagina.
Sort of; sorry, TMI, I know. Two, I was running away from my problems like a pussy-ass bitch, and I knew it, I just couldn't seem to stop myself.
And by the way, did you know that "pussy" as an insult for cowardice is not, in fact, a reference to the vagina?
True story. It's actually a very complicated situation, and not every linguist agrees with this take, but the short story is that calling someone “a pussy” is rooted in the word "pusillanimous," which does, in fact, mean weak or cowardly.
I could give you the longer version, which explains the connection between Old Norse "puss" meaning "pouch" or "purse" for the female anatomy, and a truly sexist usage of calling a man a pussy, but that's a long digression, and people tend to get annoyed at my tangents. So there you go: #themoreyouknow.
So yeah, here I am on a plane making its descent toward LA, feeling miserable and angry and full of self-loathing and a whole hell of a lot of self-pity.
The one thing I'm not is tired. You know why? Because I slept better last night than I have in months. Years, maybe. Possibly even ever. And why is that, you ask? Excellent question.
The answer?
Dane Badd.
The sexy bastard did exactly what I asked of him, despite how shittily I've treated him. He found me in his bed, in his hotel room, naked, and he just held me.
ALL—NIGHT—LONG.
With his thick, hard, beefy arms wrapped around me like the world's heaviest weighted blanket.
With that absurdly sculpted chest of his pressed against my bare back.
With that long, hot, thick salami of a cock pressed up against my naked ass, teasing and torturing. I know, I know—I did it to myself.
I slept like a damned baby. He held me. He didn't try anything, even though I felt the full glory of his hard-on wedged between my ass cheeks.
He just fucking held me, exactly as I'd asked, even though I was a rank bitch who ghosted him without explanation for my freak-out, blocked him, snapped at him at the wedding…
and then demanded he comfort me without any kind of reward.
Yeah, you'd feel like shit about yourself, too, so shut up with your judgment.
Fuck, I'm the worst.
Tears burned behind my eyes, and I dialed up the anger a bit just so I didn't start bawling right there in the ass end of economy class.
I mean, how dare Dane Badd be hot as fuck, funny as hell, incredible in bed, and understanding and forgiving? For real, where does he get off being all that?
The bastard. Save some winning for the rest of us, you damn glory hog.
Furthermore, I can hear you saying, "But Linz, wouldn't it be easier to just…I don't know…give the man an explanation?”
Yes. Obvi. That would be simpler…just not easier.
Explaining my freight train full of emotional baggage is a losing proposition, where men are concerned.
Me being kooky, independent to a fault, vulgar, foul-mouthed, and hypersexual as hell is all good and well when he thinks it's just a fun hookup, a friends-with-benefit situation, or just a low-key situationship. But when he gets a whiff of the traumatic fuckery that gestated all that fun weirdness? Poof. He’s gone. Buh-bye.
"Don't stick your dick in crazy," they tell their buds, and I'm the crazy. It’s fine to stick your dick in my crazy when there's no drama and no obligation, but if they catch a hint of me having feelings, suddenly it's not so fine to stick their dick in my crazy.
So I don't explain. No trauma dumping from this loon.
I get what I need, and I bounce before they get a chance to so much as crack off a morning fart.
I mean, why invite more pain? I've had enough of that, thanks.
I'll take my orgasms with a side of emotional unavailability, please.
And most guys are perfectly happy to oblige.
"I'll be gone before you wake up," I tell them, “so don't bother calling.
" Mainly because I don't give out my number, and if I did give a number to a guy, it was probably to a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, or a massage parlor specializing in off-book happy endings.
Yes, I gave my real number to Dane. It was a lapse in sanity, I think.
I'm not sure. I don't remember giving it to him.
Probably because I was in a post-orgasm fog at the time and probably would have agreed to give him my firstborn, had he asked.
Not that I plan to ever have kids, but you know what I mean.
When a man dicks you down so good you forget your own name and need help walking to the bathroom afterward—legit, I did—you tend to go a sorta addle-brained for a minute.
Sort of like how guys get after you've sucked their brains out through their dicks.
Ugh, now I'm thinking about his dick. About the sex.
God, it was good.
Rune and Duncan had been up in her room hashing their shit out, and then they came down and had it out with Rune's parents, which is when Dane and I made our escape.
I don't think anyone noticed that I left with him.
We had dinner and too many drinks, flirted with each other over tiramisu, shared a joint on the balcony of my apartment, and then he kissed me.
It was an epic kiss. The man knows how to use his mouth for a lot more than sarcasm and crude jokes, that's for damn sure. The man kissed me like he fucking meant it, all tongue and heat and hunger. He kissed me so damn good my panties were soaked before he even slid his hand up my shirt.
And then it was on like Donkey Kong. We fucked like porn stars, and he rode me hard and put me away wet.
God, the man's cock was…chef's kiss. Gorgeous.
Just big enough to make me question my life choices, but not so big I'd need an episiotomy beforehand. He was also blessed with the rare combination of having a massive dong and knowing what to do with it. I came so hard I saw the Lord. No, really—the stars bursting behind my eyes as I came left afterimages on my retinas that resembled White Jesus. Don’t ask me to explain it any better, because I can't.
That was great. Love it. Ten stars, would recommend.
We both passed out, because I like to think I gave as good as I got.
When he got up to take care of the condom, he had to move from bed to chair to doorway, holding onto any available surface for balance like a gym rat who hit leg day a little too hard.
Yeah, my pussy got game.
If he can still walk after you’re done fucking him, are you even doing it right? Asking the real questions, here.
I woke up to find him looking at me with a curious, speculative expression. We talked about nothing for awhile—bands, favorite concerts, movies, the random shit you chit-chat about with someone you don't really know but are naked in bed with.
This was followed by the most epic, mind-altering, pussy-shattering cunnilingus I've ever received.
The tongue? The fingering? Fuck me. I must have come two, if not three times, in less than ten minutes, and he kept going until I had to make him stop because if I came any more, I'd… I dunno. Pass out again? Have a stroke?
Can you orgasm too many times or too hard? He pushed the limits, that’s for damn sure.
Once I stopped quivering and wasn't seeing double, I started returning the favor. I felt obligated, y'know? Like, the man just introduced me to the fact that I could, apparently, come while still coming, and I felt like that deserved a reward.
Under the right circumstances, I can be induced to enjoy giving head.
It's just…a fraught proposition, laden with minefields of uncertainty: will I suffer a total mental breakdown while his cock-tip is playing tonsil-hockey at the back of my throat?
No one knows! Not me, not you, not him, probably not even God, who I hope doesn't actually watch us fuck, by the way. That'd be weird.
Anyway.
I started going down on him. It was all good and well for the first minute or two. I was just getting started, really—establishing a nice thick base layer of saliva, some tongue-swirling, all the good stuff. No worry, no hurry.
And then?
PANIC!
ANXIETY!
FLASHBACKS!
Did you know you can experience a panic attack and an anxiety attack at the same time?
It's really, really, really fun, ya'll. And to be clear, Dane did absolutely nothing to trigger it.
He's innocent, I tell you. It was all gobble gobble gobble, yum yum, ooh taste that sweet, musky precum…
and suddenly, for no reason whatsoever, I was thirteen again and Danny Cohen—my shitstain older brother's best friend—had my hair gripped in his fists, and he was ramming his cock down my throat so hard Mia Khalifa would have sympathy-gagged.
Once that happens, there's no going back.
It was a blip—a fragment of a partially-repressed memory that haunts me like the Ghost of Christmas Past. That's usually when it starts going downhill.
I started sweating, felt dizzy, my heart started pounding, and my breath came in short, sharp gasps, and my lungs felt constricted by iron bands.
For the uninitiated, those are the symptoms of an anxiety attack.
I tried to breathe through it, but it's hard to breathe when you can't breathe, y'know? Lungs don’t work, and no amount of mentally chanting "breathe, bitch!
" will make them inflate. The anxiety swelled and boiled until I was caught in the maelstrom of physical symptoms, and when you can't breathe and can't see straight, and you've got a dick in your mouth, things get tricky, especially when the dick in the mouth is the source of the anxiety.
That's when the anxiety explodes into full-blown panic.
Because—again for the uninitiated—-anxiety is the precursor to panic. Put another way, anxiety is Panic Lite?.
That's how you have both at the same time. Because when anxiety turns into panic, you don’t just go from anxiety to panic—oh no. You get anxiety and panic—when you're me, at least, and suffer from Complex PTSD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
When it struck me, I'd locked myself in the bathroom and tried to cope. Breathing. Counting. The usual tricks: five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste. Tapping. Rocking. Humming. None of it worked.
And then Dane started pounding on the door, demanding to know what the fucking problem was, understandably, since I'd gone from nomming his dong to crying and screaming for him to leave me the fuck alone in less time than it took to tickle the man's balls.
That didn't help.
I felt bad. I felt fucking terrible, honestly. If you've never totally and utterly ruined perfectly good sex with your emotional hangups, you can't know the guilt, shame, anger, and confusion you feel. It fucking sucks. Compound that with some serious confrontation avoidance issues?
I screamed and screamed for him to get the fuck out, and he had.
He had inadvertently left his white undershirt behind—it had been underneath my dress. I may or may not be wearing it right now, because it smelled like him.
So now you're all caught up: he fucked me until I couldn't walk, ate my pussy like a champion, and then had me freak-out mid-BJ, screamed at him to get the fuck out, got ghosted, blocked, and treated like shit at his own brother’s wedding, and then had me sneak into his room and demand he hold me, naked, in his bed, and then I ghosted him again the next morning.
And the only explanation he got from me was three words: It wasn't you.
Nice, huh? Yeah, I'm a real winner. Wonder why I'm still single.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.
We're beginning our final descent into Los Angeles.
We expect to land in approximately ten minutes.
It's a beautiful eighty-five degrees and sunny down there.
Please check that your seatback is in its full and upright position, your seatbelt is securely fastened, and that your tray table is stowed.
We hope you had a pleasant flight, and on behalf of the whole crew, we thank you for flying with us today. Safe travels."
Out of habit, I took my phone out of airplane mode—it erupted with an avalanche of alerts, mostly missed calls, voicemails, and texts from Raquel. I'm sure I'd have them from Dane, too, but he was still blocked.
Raquel:
WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?????
Lindsey, srsly. Answer your damn phone.
Im gettnig seriously pised, Lnz!!!!!!
The misspellings from Raquel were an indicator of her temperament—she's normally a full punctuation, no abbreviations, and checks her spelling texter, who only uses slang, abbreviations, or shorthand when pissed or in a hurry.
The six exclamation points were another solid indicator that my girl was gonna murder me when I eventually contacted her.
That's a problem for Future Linz. Today Linz is going to continue to avoid everyone I know.
I'm going home, getting on my Peloton, and doing a Cody Rigsby ride until I either pass out or my period starts, or both.
And then I'm taking a boil-me-alive hot shower and going the fuck to sleep, and I'm not getting up until things stop sucking or a solution dick-slaps me across the face, or both.
If the dick-slap was from Dane, that might answer both. But then, that's not happening, ever. Right? He's done with me, surely. Going along his merry way to dick-dazzle the lucky ladies of Ketchikan, Alaska with his gigantic, magical peen.
He doesn't want me anymore.
He wouldn't try to find me—not after this all-time great performance of self-sabotage.
The man can't possibly be that much of a glutton for punishment, can he?