CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BUNNY
“You climb and climb and climb and then wrap yourself up like this beautiful caterpillar… and then you drop…” Ora skips once, folding her hands to her chest and staring off in awe at the neon lights. “Magic. You’re a magic butterfly.”
Shifting her infatuation to my silent grin, her dilated eyes expand against the strobing orange, and she giggles, skipping once more and swirling around with imaginary ribbons on the bladder I had to accompany her to empty.
Maybe the hack to enduring this place positively is to do LSD.
Drugs and alcohol come and go through the trailer. Suppressants and depressants are passed around like candy. So, I’ve seen just about everything.
It’s interesting what people bring to the park and drop on the ground.
That’s usually how everyone gets their drugs. It’s that or they swipe it.
I digress.
I should be ecstatic right now. I got to perform for the first time without being hit or mentally abused prior.
I survived it, did great, and I’ll have an envelope of cash with my name on it.
But I am Polly Pessimistic and would rather shower and crawl into bed than wander around Vore while everyone’s riding highs of their choosing.
Keeping Ora’s acrobatics in my periphery, I scan around the laughter and chatter from the faces we pass, I guess looking even deeper for a reason to turn around and go home, waste away in the comfort of my depressive loneliness, rather than shed some giggles and smiles that hurt more than me cutting myself.
This is why you’re not included or trusted.
Wait. That’s it.
My eyes light up, my face sinking with realization. Maybe if I stop caring, participate in the wild things they do and engage in social time—I’ll start getting my answers without having to fight for them. Or worry about a certain individual crowding my mind and suffocating my paranoia.
Something’s liable to slip eventually. Just like it did earlier when Gwen was cut off from saying too much.
I really want to know what she was going to say.
Picking up my pace, I catch up to Ora’s side and make sure the coast is clear, then hook my hand around her arm and pull her through the open doors of the arcade.
“Wait-wait!” Stopping me on the glowing carpet, in a thick cloud of nacho cheese, she slips from my grip and throws up a timeout with her hands. “I told Xene if we ever kissed that he could watch.”
My face scrunches, wondering how she managed to get there from me gently redirecting her course. Or why she and Xene have already discussed that ever being a possibility. But… she is tripping on a party favor. So, I’m not even going to ask or over explain myself.
Huffing, I grab her hand and pull her off to the side, checking behind the curtains of the Photo Booth before stepping inside.
“Ohh, privacy. I should have known you like it in secret by your shower escapades.”
“Oraa,” I whine, taking a seat and shooting my appalment at her.
She laughs, plopping down next to me, her arm already stretched out to tap through the customization prompts on the screen. “I need to at least get some proof. His biggest fantasy is watching us scissor.”
Horror punches through me, sending my blood in a painful slam to my heart. “What? Why?”
I’ve never looked at her that way. And I definitely didn’t know about Xene having a whole mental spank bank of something that would never happen. But I will admit…
Ugh, should I? Should I admit it?
Might as well. You probably already know me better than the people I’ve lived with for two years.
I was just going to say that the images are warming my limbs and face. Like, thinking about what Xene would see, why he’d like it, how slick and velvety the friction would be, how soft her thighs would be sliding against mine, how supple and tender she’d look in the moonlight…
Oh, no.
My legs tense, rejecting the heavy ache that’s clearly trying to reroute my focus for the uncountable time today. “Okay, no.” I toss my hands up, trying my hardest to give her a stern face while I dissolve the pornography.
She lazily purses her lips, her bangs swaying with the angle she tilts her puppy eyes into. “No?”
“No, that’s insane. Besides, Razor would probably kill you if you ever admitted that to him. Or near him. He can probably smell that in the air and is already hunting us down.”
Coming in here, I did not think the truth would be that my best friend, who I sleep a few feet away from every night, talks to her situation, boyfriend, whatever Xene is to her, about something that would never even cross my mind.
The flash goes off with a shutter, capturing the exotic eye contact stiffening the box we’re hidden away in.
“Hmm…” She twists her lips, raising her vape to her mouth for a drag that narrows her eyes.
It’s a natural reaction to target her lips, zone in on the light suction that crackles right before she breaks it. I’ve just never done so while being curiously confused.
A faint cloud puffs through her smooth lips and another flash strikes over us. “Do you wanna practice for him?” she asks softly.
My tongue rests in the ocean of my nerves, forcefully swallowing and shifting to face the countdown of the next picture. “I don’t wanna talk about this anymore. You’re tripping right now.”
I don’t know what LSD does to the mind or body, or if she’s even consciously talking to me. Which makes it a great opportunity to ask her something, but now I don’t know how to.
Sitting through another silent picture with a dripping thrum and words combing through my head isn’t optimal.
It’s awkward. And tense. And I feel this ungodly pressure to blurt out what I want to know all while having this deep-rooted urge to let my sickness win for something innocent, for something that will give us what we both want.
I’d consider myself to be a chronic overthinker. But the need for a breadcrumb, or a footprint I can follow, is overwhelming the hum I’m swimming in.
Before I can stop myself, I’m twisting and cupping her cheek.
The bug in my heart migrates to my eyes, wavering my vision dropping to her mouth, and the inferno gutting me has me leaning into the blue raspberry dancing like candy on her lips.
Her soft lips latch with mine, the heat of her jetting breath collecting on my upper lip and filtering over my damp cheeks.
She mewls, grabbing at my hips and unsealing us, just to tilt her head the opposite way and lock our lips tighter. More aggressively. While her hands are slipping around my backside for a firm grab of my butt that has my jaw shaking.
If it weren’t for the shuttering flash capturing this—I’d keep going. Just to explore. To appease the desire of wanting pleasurable distractions. But as her tongue lightly flicks over the seal of my lips, I draw back and open my eyes with burning cheeks.
She cracks her eyes open, giving me a lascivious grin and wetting her lips. “Razor’s so lucky, baby bunny.”
“I haven’t kissed him yet,” I whisper, getting hit with the daunting fact that he’d probably lose his mind if he found out I kissed someone other than him.
My stomach sinks and I drift away, having to clear my throat of the nerves beginning to choke me.
Frowning at me, her palms skate down my thighs and she blinks. “Are you fucking serious?”
I nod, suctioning the inside of my bottom lip between my teeth. Another fricking picture washes over my sight, getting a grand shot of how awkward I am. “I thought you knew that… Why’d you say practice then?”
“Oh, psh!” Trilling her lips, she rolls her eyes and starts laughing. “I just talked some fuck to kiss you. I’m elated with the results.”
Talked some fu… Interesting.
“Can I ask you something?” I blurt, immediately blowing my cheeks up and fiddling with my cuticles.
“Doi, whatcha got?” She pivots to me, sucking on her vape and casually leaning sideways into the booth seat—like we didn’t just cross boundaries of our friendship.
“Uh…” I inhale deeply, scratching my middle finger through the fraying of my shorts. “Do you remember what we were doing before this?”
She lifts a brow, blowing a steady stream of smoke from her nose. “Before this? We were doing what we’re doing now. Performing.”
“Here at Vore?”
“Yes, Bunny,” she cheers vapidly, then shoves her vape in her pocket and pastes a smile on. “Come on, let’s see our pics!”
She’s scrambling out before me, most likely to get away from the probing questions she can sniff out even while high.
“I’m not sharing this with Xene by the way,” she titters, letting the curtains close me into the Photo Booth. “What the fuck?”
My forehead tightens, and curiosity moves me out of the booth, slipping through the curtains and rounding the back end to where she’s bent over and digging her hand through the photo slot on the side.
“It’s not here!” Ripping her hand out of the hole, her vexed perplexion snaps over to me and she straightens her back.
“Uh, maybe it’s out of paper… or whatever they use in these,” I gesture to the booth.
“No, I heard it.” She looks around, giving everyone in here an accusatory double stink eye.
Okay. Well. If my stomach wasn’t pressing against my butt before, it is now. That’s the last thing I need floating around. And I really don’t like the stalkerish feeling I’m getting from it. It’s combining with the angst of having my alarm clock cut and now my spine feels weird.
If Razor snagged it, he’d be holding it up in my face, probably pressed flush against my backside and tormenting me with his free hand.
So, I don’t think he has it.
“Hey! You!” Ora shouts, pointing at the lip curled around dirty braces.
The kid stops in his tracks, holding an ICEE in one hand and a mound of tickets in the other.
“Yeah, you! Who came by here?!”
He shrugs tensely, warily looking over each shoulder. “Some big guy.”
Some big guy? … Some big guy.