Just Like Mother

Chapter 3-2

I had met Ryan in the most unflattering of circumstances. He was bartending and I was at his bar, blind drunk. I’d been eyeing him for weeks, and that time I’d decided to tell him I wanted to f**k him. Or so the story went, according to Ryan. All I knew was, it was that easy. He walked me home – which was when, according to him, I threw myself at him – and I woke up the next morning, fully clothed, on top of my bed, with a text from a strange number saying I’ll call you, and he did.

By the night of my firing, Ryan and I had been f*****g for nearly a year. f*****g – such a boring word. But what we were doing was fundamentally boring. And sweet, despite its gently sadomasochistic undertones. Ryan liked to call me ‘Fifty Shades of Maeve.’ He thought it was hilarious as well as complimentary, which said something about the ways Ryan and I differed, and the ways we were the same.

The truth of it was, Ryan made me feel sexier and more adored than I’d felt in years. And I needed it. I felt adored when he f****d me from behind, clutching my extensions in a fist and tugging my head backwards. I felt sexy when he flipped me over and placed a hand on my collarbone, near enough to my throat to excite me but far enough to offer me ease. Everything was like that with him: just near enough, but not too close. Which was why, when Ryan ground out his spliff in the jewelry dish on my nightstand, I let him, knowing what would come next. Ryan had an appetite for things and people. I happened to be one of those people, for now.

I was lying on my back, relatively disinterested, which excited him more. He bent over me, hovering his naked torso inches from my frame. He ran a finger lightly down my sternum, making trails over my loose-fitting cotton tank top, then lower. I felt my body responding, but I held myself motionless. Ryan liked this game. He liked to see how long it would take to excite me, and I in turn liked the way every response I gave, however minor, made him harden. Sometimes my tells were practiced, sometimes involuntary.

He pressed his hand between my thighs. It was a gentle pressure, and I moved my hips against him, allowing my mouth to part. I was sore from the first time. Sore, raw, and turned on by the weight of his hand in the place that was most sensitive.

I shifted backward, my breath quickening. Every nerve in my body was on fire. The aching pain of want was indistinguishable from the pain of his palm against me. He slipped a finger beneath the elastic lining of my underwear and teased my outer edges until I lifted toward him. He knew what I liked. When his finger entered me, I felt my eyes roll back in my head and I succumbed to all the terrible soreness from before – the type of discomfort that would convert to pleasure, reminding me of the first time I had s*x.

I had been disinterested, and now I was not. Now I was single-minded. He did this to me. I closed my eyes. I saw it there: the mayhem. I wanted to be battered, twisted, bloodied like the thing in my head.

I jerked away, my heart thudding.

He smiled. ‘You okay?’

‘Mm-hmm.’ My breathing was shallow.

He put a finger against my lip and came away with blood. He stared at it, rapt. ‘You bit yourself.’

‘Oh.’ I licked my lip. The chalky taste of metal met my tongue.

‘God. You’re never boring, are you?’ He put his finger in his mouth and sucked it longer than he needed to for it to come out clean. I closed my eyes again and met rivers of blood in my brain. I felt like I might retch.

Remain steady. Remain in the present.

He was hovering just inches above me, close enough to tease me. ‘You like that?’ he wanted to know. He put his mouth so close to mine, I could suck his breath into me, until I got no oxygen at all but was filled only with his expulsions. I played along, arching my back and flicking my tongue toward his mouth. He pulled away, teasing. Then he crushed his mouth to mine, allowing our tongues to intertwine, until I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and drew him to me, willing away the millimeters of distance that lingered between us. I tasted blood again, and when he raised his head, his lips were smeared with it.

I shut my eyes tight, gritting my teeth against the pictures in my head.

‘f**k me,’ I told him. ‘Hard.’ I needed him to make me see stars instead of blood and twisted limbs. To leave me wrecked liked I wanted. It was all I wanted.

He climbed on top of me, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. I put one palm against his chest and pushed him, hard, onto his back.

‘Whoa,’ he said, grinning.

‘Shut up,’ I told him.

‘God, you’re sexy.’

‘Shut up.’

He was on his back, splayed out over the bed and looking at me in wonderment, like he’d never seen such a vision.

Neither had I. My own vision reared its ugly head at me, threatening to consume me from the inside out.

I clamped a hand over his mouth. I lowered my body onto his, allowing him to pulse against me. Then I pressed myself down. Hard. Hard enough to push everything out of my head.

He grunted. ‘Baby,’ he said, gasping as I moved. I tightened my hand over his mouth. I didn’t want to hear it. I squeezed my eyes shut and rocked my hips on top of him until he couldn’t talk – he could only gasp with pleasure – and I could finally remove my hand, because finally he was rendered helpless. His hands were around my hips, aiding my exertions, so each time I came down on him was harder and more powerful than the last.

‘f**k,’ he groaned once.

For a fleeting moment, I wished I could shut him up, really shut him up, see his hands rattling against the bars of the cell I made for him in my head, see him plead with me to let him out.

‘Baby, please,’ he said.

‘Please, what?’ I asked, moving more slowly.

‘Use me,’ he said. ‘Use me however you want.’

‘You mean that?’ I lifted my body halfway, hovering above him until he answered. I was slick with sweat.

‘Yes,’ he said.

His face flashed behind my closed eyes, pressed against the steel bars of a cage. I raked my nails over his skin, and in my head I left him bleeding. The visions were hideous and distorted, just as they were every time. I moved until all I saw was the flashing light of my own mounting release.

‘Harder.’ I gasped, feeling my pleasure approach. But I was the one going harder, taking from him what I wanted, pulling the life out of him with each exertion of my own.

When I came, the visions stilled. The space behind my eyes was blank. The only thing I was aware of was my shuddering body. Every clench of pleasure pushed the ugliness away until I was empty.

I collapsed on top of him.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘That was incredible. You were a woman possessed.’

The room began to return to me. I pulled my body from his and rolled onto my side, resting a hand over my throbbing pelvis. ‘I’ve got to go clean up.’

‘Let me throw this away really fast.’ He pulled off the condom and tied it in a knot.

‘I didn’t know you came,’ I told him.

He laughed. ‘I didn’t know you cared.’

‘I don’t.’

Then I looked at him, and his expression was so stunned that I had to laugh too.

‘I’m kidding,’ I said, hoping he believed I wasn’t broken. That I hadn’t wanted to break him too. ‘Of course I care. Here, I’ll throw that away for you.’

I knew that even in our private universe, there were boundaries. There was a normal, and if I didn’t play within the bounds of normal, he would leave. There were so many things I wanted from him, so many things I wanted him to do to me, to wipe out the intrusive thoughts. The things I wanted were abnormal – dangerous. I knew that much. These were the things I didn’t dare say aloud.

I went to the bathroom and rested my head in my hands as I peed. When I wiped, there was a spot of blood on the toilet paper. It would hurt later. I was glad. I wiped myself clean with soap and stared at my face in the mirror. My eyes were bright under the tangle of my hair. My makeup had been rubbed off and my face was raw from his beard. Somewhere in another universe I was someone sweet and unencumbered and open to love, open to the things Ryan wanted to give me. But in this universe, I didn’t want sweet.

A shadow in my periphery jolted me out of my head. I turned and realized I’d left the window cracked several inches, enough for someone to see way too much of my naked body. I yanked my towel off its hook and wrapped it around me, backing all the way up against the door opposite the window. My arms were covered in gooseflesh. Someone had been watching me, I was sure of it. They could still be out there. Watching. Waiting. I counted to three, then forced myself to step out from under the cover of the bathroom door in order to slide the window shut.

A knock sounded on the door, and I screamed. ‘Maeve?’

‘Oh god, I’m so sorry.’ I opened the door to Ryan, whose eyes were narrowed with concern. ‘I thought I saw something outside,’ I told him.

‘I heard you whimpering…’

‘I was whimpering?’

‘Come here.’ Ryan drew me in to his chest, wrapping his arms around me until my chills subsided. ‘Are you okay? Do you want me to check outside?’

‘No, no. It was probably just a raccoon or something.’ I tried hard to buy into my own explanation.

When we climbed back in bed, I was still prickling from fear. He pulled me toward him for a kiss. ‘Just a sec,’ I told him, dodging it. I wriggled away and pretended to look at my phone. ‘Busy day tomorrow,’ I said over my shoulder. The truth was, his tenderness made me uncomfortable.

When I rolled back over, Ryan was relighting his spliff, and I began to relax. This was the part I loved the best. When we hung out, smoking and watching something dumb and funny like Bob’s Burgers or just chatting or playing silly made-up word games or fake-reading tarot. When my mind was still blank and my body was jelly. This was my favorite part – the not-f*****g. The f*****g itself, it was a means to an end.

He extended the joint toward me and I accepted. The best thing about Ryan was that I knew I’d never fall in love with him. But I liked him, and that was enough. And he didn’t think I was a freak. Or he did and he enjoyed it.

‘Yo,’ he said then, sounding uncharacteristically nervous. ‘I was serious before, Maeve. Why not just freelance? And, I don’t know, rent this place out for a month or two online? You could stay with me for a while. Accomplish the same purpose as staying upstate, but you’d get to be here, taking meetings and job hunting and all that stuff. And also we wouldn’t have to stop having sex.’

I groaned and pinched him. ‘Move in with you?’ I teased. ‘Don’t you think it’s a little fast?’ But I felt a wave of relief. It would afford me the ability to get back on my feet. He was offering me the life preserver I needed, in an environment where I was comfortable.

‘Just something to think about,’ he murmured into my hair. ‘You know. Get you a little extra income. Buy you some time. And, I don’t know. Sure. See where things take us.’ It became clear that he was serious.

It wasn’t a bad idea, I thought, as I began to drift off. If I ignored the last part, anyway. I didn’t want to think about that, to change the nature of what we were. Staying with him wouldn’t need to be for long. I could job hunt and freelance from cafés to stay out of his way during the week, then head upstate for the weekends to rebuild my relationship with Andrea at a comfortable pace while also preventing my relationship with Ryan from becoming too intense.

We fell asleep then, curled around each other, and I woke up periodically to kiss him on his shoulder, his back, wherever was available to my lips. In the night, nothing felt significant. The next day, I threw on my future dress, taking satisfaction in the routine, even though it was no longer necessary. A blue dress this time. Really just a light sack. I added a long gold necklace and some pumps and sprayed on perfume. Ryan groaned and rolled over, reaching for me. I leaned toward him, smiling into his sleepy face, then went in for a kiss.

‘You look pretty,’ he said.

I left knowing he’d leave a Jolly Rancher on my nightstand when he went. Sometimes it was accompanied by old receipts or a few coins. I never knew for sure if the candy was for me or was just detritus from his pocket. I liked not knowing. I walked out knowing too that I’d see him again the following week, and we’d repeat the routine. I was like a dog that way, with men – always had been. I liked routine, structure. I rode the train into the city and waited in line at the pastry shop near the doctor’s office for an iced green tea, extra lemon – my go-to hangover cure. Structure had always been scarce in my life; I had to take it where it came.