A Miraculous Affair

Impact.

I moaned as soon as I felt the vibrations on my clit. Loudly. Carnally. My friends wouldn't recognize the voice that came out of my mouth.

"Oh, fuck yes!"

I ground my clit against the wand, used at this point to how it felt. At first I still had to wear my panties when using the wand, the impact felt that strong. Now, my clit was strong. It could take much more, and I wanted to give it more. I wanted to push myself to the absolute sexual limit. At that moment, I swear, I would have done anything dirty.

I took out my phone and booted up my favorite porn. I felt so dirty watching porn, knowing it was supposed to be a thing girls didn't do. A lot of it was dumbly made, and definitely not for girls, but something about that excited me too. I found something hot I 'shouldn't have.' I liked that. I moved my hips back and forth to meet my magic wand, working its magic on my love button, watching some hung buff guy absolutely destroying a girl half his size. It was almost a shame I was taller than the average girl. I would have loved to be destroyed like that.

My orgasm came swiftly and powerfully, and as always, I did not hold back my cries as I felt energy surge from my pussy. I liked that word, pussy. It felt so degenerate, almost childish in its openly reductive nature. My needy little pussy.

I panted heavily, feeling myself coming down from my high. I couldn't wait until I could get a guy that would eat my pussy, I bet that was going to feel amazing. I traced lines around my inner thighs again, feeling out if I wanted to go for round two. It would be far from the first time, and the porn video was only halfway through. Since everything was already prepared, it would be a shame to waste the opportunity. I closed my eyes and bit my lip, feeling the wand get closer to my clit again.

***

"You what?!" I exclaimed.

Maddie shrugged. "I hung out with Cam yesterday," she repeated quietly. "It was kind of fun."

I turned to Heather. "Did we not talk about, like, all the red flags he's ever shown anyone ever, multiple times?" I asked.

Heather nodded grimly. "You need to be careful, Maddie," she joined in. "He never just does this for girls because he likes their personalities and thinks they're cool. He always wants something."

Maddie paused, then moved her mouth around in thought. "I mean... there are worse things."

"Are you serious?" I barked.

"I'm just saying! I find him cute, he finds me cute, what's the harm?" she defended herself.

"The harm-" I started, though Heather gestured that she wanted to try, so with great restraint, I stopped myself.

"You find him cute in a way where you want to spend more time with him and get to know him better," Heather began. "Which is totally valid. Love that. But he finds you cute in, like, a fascination way. Like, he wants to have you until he gets bored. He might say he wants something real or whatever but that's only to get what he wants. He's never made the exception with any girl. He will dump you when you feel the strongest for him. He will cheat on you. He will turn around and say you said and did things to make him look better, things you never said and did. We all know it." I nodded along the way with every word Heather said.

"I don't get why this turned into a 'fuck Cam' party," Maddie said with a pout.

"...When has it not been that?" I asked.

"We get he's cute," Heather explained.

"I don't," I cut in crabbily.

Heather shot me a look, then continued. "But he's just not worth it. Admire him from afar if you have to do anything. Just don't engage."

Maddie sulked as the three of us finished our food. We didn't talk about a lot more -- mainly just classes and stuff. Annoyingly, and worryingly, Maddie was getting increasingly less interested in any topic other than Cameron. That was always part of the story; the girl becoming obsessed. I would be dead in the ground before I was going to let Cameron get to my friend too.

Clearly, though, his sights were set on her. Just as we talked about getting up, we heard his voice from across the cafeteria. "Hey, Maddie!" All three of us turned to see his crooked grin and waving hand. Maddie enthusiastically waved back. Heather and I exchanged worried glances.

No sooner than he had found us was he sitting down at the normally vacant fourth chair. Maddie was immediately transfixed, much to my displeasure. "Hi, Cam," she sang as he sat down. "I really enjoyed our time together the other day. I was just telling the others about it."

Cameron smiled and looked right at me. He caught my look and his smile didn't wane. "Uh-oh, are we going to have a talk?" he teased. "Don't worry; like I promised, I was nothing but respectful to her. You can ask her if you don't believe me."

"It's true!" Maddie immediately backed him up enthusiastically. "We didn't -- he -- I honestly think he's changed, Jacq."

"To be fair, it's her right to not trust me immediately," Cameron assured us all in his best politician voice. "But I want this behind me as much as anyone else."

"That takes action, not words," Heather added, the first thing she said since he sat down.

Cameron nodded solemnly. "I agree," he replied. "And that takes time, doesn't it? But hey, anyways, what class do you all have next?"

"I don't recall us inviting you to talk to us," I cut in. "If you really are hell-bent on this 'actions not words' crap, why do you just assume you can invade our space?"

"Ooh, 'invade,' good word," he teased. "Well, if you don't want me here, I can scram, but I did want to talk to Maddie here. We've been getting along pretty well."

"As well as Georgina? Or Ash? Or Lena?" I pressed on. At this point, I'd heard all of their names multiple times.

His expression darkened in thought, the first negative emotion I'd really seen him display. "It kind of hurts that Lena's included in that list," he replied thoughtfully. "I could see I made mistakes with Ash and Georgina for sure. I'm a passionate guy and sometimes I can make dumb mistakes in the moment. But Lena was really uncool with me. She was, uh... she did some things that were really uncalled for, and kind of slandered me afterwards."

"What did she do?" Heather asked. Her body language was telling me she still didn't trust him but her curiosity was still clearly piqued.

"I dunno if I want to get into it," he bashfully replied. "I mean, I hate this drama going on about me, it doesn't seem right to do it to someone else, you know?"

Maddie listened to him with wide-eyed wonder. "Did she hurt you?"

"Well, I mean, yeah," he replied quietly, with a nervous smile. "People hurt each other all the time. I'm sure she's grown as a person since."

He kept looking at me for the majority of the time he spoke, like he wasn't really even speaking to the other two. I guess he really wanted to plead his case to me and show me he was actually a better guy now, but it was definitely weird how much he was ignoring Maddie while he spoke. What was weirder still was that Maddie didn't even care. He came here on the basis of saying hi to Maddie. And after thinking about it I realized, I didn't see him looking once at her. Not once. Surely if Maddie was head-over-heels for the guy, that would at least hurt that she didn't get his attention, even if she did believe his lies. No, especially if she believed his lies.

But she didn't care, she just looked at him with some sickening combination of adoration and pure interest in his story. "We can keep a secret! I wanna hear about it," she insisted.

"I can't keep a secret," I lied with a sour face. "Guess you shouldn't spill the beans."

"Then it's decided," Cameron replied with a smirk, gesturing at me as he glanced at Heather. "I'd rather you remember her good qualities anyway. She was an interesting person for sure. She, y'know, taught me things like palm-reading."

That piqued the interest of Heather, lover of all things spiritual. "Can you still do it?"

Cameron extended both of his hands across the table. "May I?"

Heather gave a nervously excited glance my way. I just stared back at her. When she looked at Maddie, Maddie gave her an enthusiastic nod, so hesitantly, Heather extended her palm across the table. Cameron dragged a finger across her palm, making her nervously squirm in his chair, then studied the lines along her hands.

"Okay, yes... hmm... alright! See this line here? It means, uh... I'm pretty sure it means you'll come into money, suddenly," he said hazily, trying to focus. "There's a lot to remember here. This here is the head line. Now, because you have what's called a 'water hand,' I can tell you that... sorry, is this your dominant hand?"

I rolled my eyes and scooped up my bag. "I'll see you all later," I calmly said as I began to walk away.

"Well, hold on, do you want a turn?" Cameron interjected quickly, still holding Heather's hand. With his free hand, he gestured to mine, like he wanted my hand to come closer.

"No thanks, I'm already late for class," I replied dismissively.

As I turned around, I wanted to savor the moment and watch him lose whatever upper hand he thought he had. In some kind of either desperation or defeat, he turned to Maddie and Heather and donned some kind of pitiful expression. How stupid. It wasn't like they were going to help plead his case to me.

"Jacqueline, come on, stay!" Maddie pleaded.

Okay, that one was kind of a given. I was naive to think that Maddie wasn't won over by his charms by this point. I had to keep a serious eye on her. I would hate myself if I lost her to him and had to witness her having her heart broken by him.

Amazingly, Heather turned around, clear sympathy for Cameron in his eyes. "Are you sure?" she asked hesitantly. "Maybe we should give him a chance!"

My mouth dropped open in disappointment. Maddie was a little shallow, but Heather knew better. So what, just because he could read palms, she suddenly turned on a dime for him This was absolutely ridiculous. I was the only one in this group who had any common sense.

"It's 1:52," I reported with a sharp edge to my voice.

"Oh, shit," Heather cursed. She turned back to Cameron. "Could I have my hand back? I need to get to class, there's a test today."

My eyebrows went up. She was asking him for her own hand?

Cameron shared my reaction, laughing with a confused expression. "Can you-? Uh, yeah, of course, I don't own your hands." He released her hand which she quickly retracted, and gave her a friendly smile. "But this was cool. Maybe, if you wanted, I could give you an actual palm reading sometime."

My scowl no doubt deepened. This was how he got them. This was how it starts.

Cameron turned back to me and caught my glance, and I thought his smile would wane. It didn't. He studied my expression as if he realized a serious error, not as if he was caught being the scumbag he was. "In fact, Maddie, why don't you come along?" he asked, not taking his eyes off of mine. "Keep me accountable. Plus, I think I'll need someone to let Jacqueline here know that my intentions the whole time were honorable."

Maddie gave a stupid little giggle that made me roll my eyes. She could be such a ditz. Heather turned back to look at me, and even with Cameron watching, I shook my head no seriously.

She turned back to him and seemingly weighed her options. "I'll have to think about it, okay?"

"Hey, that's all I can ask," he replied like the proverbial gentleman. I didn't bother to see what else they had to say before I started walking away.

He was the god damn personification of red flags. Why the fuck were my best friends letting him in so easily? Why the fuck did he have to enter our friend group like this? It was maddening. I had to do something.

***

I couldn't do anything. I tried, and I never let up with him, but I could not do a damn thing. Cameron was just accepted into our friend group, just like that. I did feel reassured that virtually any time he was with Maddie, Heather was there -- and both of them swore that he was well-behaved the whole time. I even took Heather with me into the next room at one point and confirmed Cameron was never alone with Maddie for too long. I knew this was probably his plan, but I was getting exhausted. Caring was exhausting, as was being vigilant.

I had a worry in the pit of my stomach that he calculated that. He knew, correctly so, that no one could keep thinking about him and talking about him for too long. Eventually, I'd let my guard down, and that would be when he broke Maddie's heart, or even Heather's.

I didn't get Heather. I thought she mostly came down on my side. Even if she acknowledged Cameron was cute to her or whatever, she seemed oddly chill with him, basically as soon as he sat down at our table. If he also charmed his way into my heart when he sat down, or even attempted, I'd at least understand her. But... he didn't. He only gave me more red flags. I straight-up didn't understand what made Heather instantly let her guard down for him.

So a few times I asked, and I either got a blank expression or a confused one. She never gave me an answer. She never understood the question. It was not reassuring, to say the least. And to make matters worse, this was the extent of my social life.

I was seeing boys more often if anything. And that's what they were -- boys, not men. Boys masquerading as men, pretending to fit the physiques and majors they paraded around. Some were easier on the eyes. Some weren't. I tried tough boys, sensitive boys, even writers, for God's sake, writers.

It always ended the same way. With me, on my back, annoying the neighbors with my loud sex moans, delicately dancing my vibrating wand over my aching clit. Alone. Wishing I could find a guy that I could just put up with past a second date. When I first came to college I told myself I would only have sex with a man if I stayed with him beyond a few months. Now? I was desperate. If he could make it to the third date, I'd do it.

Still, it wasn't like I needed a man. I had enough cocky masculinity hanging over me, nearly day-to-day at this point. Maybe I should have just seen the emerging pattern and made my peace with it. I could marry my work and cheat on it with my vibrator. I'd probably be happier that way, anyways.

***

"...And now that we're in an age of surveillance, the ideas of Foucault are more important than ever," Cameron gushed.

"That's so amazing," Maddie replied, her mouth hanging open in true awe of the sheer brilliance of Cameron. It was a wonder she wasn't drooling. Heather was more reserved than Maddie's open worship of the boy, but she was clearly also transfixed on his gospel.

"And his ideas influence so much of the world today: how we see mental health, how we see power and revolution, or resistance to power, and how we see sexuality."

I shot him a look when he said that word, and annoyedly, I could see he was already looking back at me.

Nevertheless, he blushed. "He's just so important, and it's crazy I never learned about him until I took philosophy."

"I would have thought a guy like you would have been interested in philosophy for a long time," I replied, feeling I should say something. The guy looked like someone who charmed girls by quoting Marx instead of hyper-masculine things like shooting guns and drinking beer, or even niche things like riding skateboards.

"Oh, I was," he admitted proudly. "I just really got into Foucault this year. He's just so good at looking at the real, not just the abstract, you know?"

"Cameron gets so passionate about his journey through life," Maddie gushed to me. "Like, he actually follows through with it. Like, for example, he's a minimalist, and you should see it. His room has nothing but his bed in it. It's so zen! Nothing but the necessities. I dunno, it's just so mind-blowing to actually see it!"

Cameron laughed in agreement. "So many guys want to say they're minimalist, but do they put in the effort?" he asked the two. They simply shook their heads. "Right, they just say it because it sounds nice. Well, it feels even nicer to actually do it. It's actually a lot like Foucault. So many of his contemporaries thought of abstract terms in a vacuum, but he developed his philosophies based on what people were actually saying. That's real philosophy, you know?"

Christ. I was going to actually vomit. It didn't help that Maddie audibly sighed after hearing him. I didn't say anything and kept reading my book as he let the words sink in, but evidently, he didn't like the silence. "Say, whatcha reading there, Jacq?"

"My name is Jacqueline," I replied firmly. "A book for class."

"Yeah, but, what's it about?" he pressed on.

"I won't know until I really get into it," I replied honestly. "I don't like thinking I know things until I've fully understood the message."

"Ooh, you must hate philosophy then," he joked with a grin.

"Kinda, yeah," I replied honestly. Philosophy, at least in college, was usually just a tool students used to sound smart anyway. People would just quote old dead guys and apply it to modern-day life, as if that itself was profound. Most of the time they didn't even get what the philosophers were saying.

Cameron was the king of this. He'd quote Marx at least once every few days or so, and talk about how his ideas were so radical and then... go on to show he knew nothing about Marx's ideas. I had to read Capital for a class at one point, and it was clear he did not.

Cameron lost his smile, mostly. A remnant of it remained on his face. That was like his face's version of neutral. "Well, it's not for everyone. I just like the ambiguity of it."

"Mm," I replied disinterestedly, going back to my book.

"You know, I swear I read the exact same book for a class of mine once," he said, voice brimming with curiosity. "Do you mind if I...?" He reached for the book, his hand outstretched towards the spine of the book, where my hand was.

I moved the book to the side. "Do you mind? I'm reading. I'm sure the library has multiple copies," I said sternly.

He stared at me for a few seconds, his smile gone completely. "Can we... talk? You know, like, alone for a second?"

"No thanks," I replied.

He turned to Maddie and Heather, then gestured towards me. "I think I need to speak with Jacqueline alone for a bit, maybe clear out some of this tension. I feel like I won't be able to be as vulnerable if everyone is here, so could you give us, like, five minutes?"

I eyed them. "I'd prefer if they stay."

"I think we should have this conversation," Cameron replied in a new tone. It wasn't unfriendly, but until now, he had this 'nah, don't worry about it' casual tone to his voice, like the facade of a joke. Here, he was deadly serious. "I want to hang out with the group more often and right now, it's clear you and I don't see eye to eye."

"Sorry, but that's not my problem," I replied. "I made it clear from the beginning that I didn't want you in this group."

"Yeah, but we do."

I put down my book. Maddie stared at me, having just stood up to me. I could see frustration in her eyes. Maddie was standing up to me. It was clear that Cameron was getting to her, and clearly, in the battle for her esteem, I was losing. "We?" I repeated.

I turned to Heather, who meekly shrugged. "Well, he's hanging around us anyway, and, I mean, if he and Maddie and I are going to hang out after class in our dorms... it would be cool if you guys put this behind you. You know, so it could be all of us."

"...I've made it clear, crystal clear, to you two that I don't feel comfortable hanging around with him. And now you want me to just get over it? What if I refuse?" My chest was rising and falling. This was completely ridiculous. They'd always respected my boundaries in the past.

Heather shrugged again. "I just think you two should talk it out. I think, objectively, it's a good idea."