Impact of Collision Ch. 08

This is a collaboration with the amazing SiteNonSite, who has been co-posting it under Novels and Novellas. As always I encourage you to take the time to read all of SiteNonSite's stories if you haven't already.

This chapter does not have the same level of heat as previous chapters, so if you're looking for a hot fix, there's 7 previous chapters.

Warning/Trigger Warning - just for the lesbian sex purists there is some heterosexual activity in this chapter (we have tried to keep this minimal - but it is part of Sarah's story which she needed to be tell. Don't act all offended - you already knew she wasn't a gold star.) On a serious note, it may be a challenging one due to some religious themes. Consider this your warning.

For those of you who have been following since the beginning - yes, this is for you, you will finally get some answers to your questions. That said you may have many more questions, so please leave them in the comments.

Special thanks to HaltWhoGoesThere for proof reading this chapter for us.

I hadn't really been thinking about where I was until I turned down 1st Ave, and with a little jolt of surprise saw that I was in Little India. Walking downtown from Port Authority I'd known where I was headed, I wasn't lost or even off course, it was mostly a straight shot down Broadway. But I'd been walking in a bit of a daze. New York is especially dirty on Sunday mornings, and a little strange... not quite itself. The whole city feels like it slept in its clothes; slowly waking up hungover and empty. So everything seems unfamiliar anyway, but I also hadn't been over this way in years.

And even as fucked up and out of control as everything felt, part of me couldn't help but find it striking that my mind was still stitching a map of the city together, that I was still placing disconnected places I know separately in relation to each other - connecting them.

And so here I was, in front of the funny little twin Indian restaurants Darci had dubbed "Jeff and Akbar". A group of us had been visiting the city from Brown for a symposium. I remember I had tried so hard to get Danny to come down from Buffalo and meet me that trip, and I'd been so relieved he hadn't come.

I looked around, reorienting myself, I was at 1st and 6th. To be fair, I hadn't thought of that trip in years, much less been down this way. I try to remember who I'd been with that night besides Darci and Kwasi - Bald Jeff... I think Bobbie, but I'm not sure. I remembered that there were six of us, that we had to wait for a big enough table, the two restaurants both scrambling to make room fast enough to get us inside first.

The warring restaurants occupied two tiny, but almost identical, walk-up spaces in a single storefront. One stairwell led towards their doors - facing each other - each space mirroring the other, each with the same plate glass front, and each competing to outdo the other with cheap strings of lights hanging from the ceiling - hundreds of them. Competing hawkers, both in ties and waistcoats, had pressed us to come to one or the other, extolling the great virtues of their respective establishments.

We had gone to the one on the right... or maybe it was the one on the left - it had been years ago. I'd needed to duck under the thousands of tiny lights hanging from the ceiling - strings of tiny white bulbs, glowing chili peppers, Santas and sleighs, all a jumble.

"Nothing means anything," Kwasi had joked looking up at them. Which had triggered a diatribe about postmodernism from Bald Jeff that we had all shouted down.

The six of us had crowded at a table in the back, the heat of the lights bearing down on the tops of our heads - especially Kwasi, who was a head taller than Jeff. The rush to order, the waiters bringing us one course after another after another, until the table was crowded with plates, pretty little hammered tin bowls, and towering cans of Kingfisher lager. The food had been mediocre at best, but no one cared. Kwasi and Darci hadn't started dating yet, and he had been flirting with us and doting on me, making me laugh. She had been holding on to me, whispering in my ear. It had been a fun night. I'd been happy.

In the light of day the little places looked dingy and tawdry.

'Lots of things look tawdry in the light of day,' I thought, walking down the tree-less avenue, the trash in the gutters, the stained sidewalks and shuttered storefronts. It had all started going wrong when Claire had told us how old she was.

It's not like she lied to me. We'd never talked about our ages, I'd just assumed. But, I thought of the way she had introduced me as a "prodigy" and "wunderkind" to her friends at events, "Young Sarah" when we were alone.

'I just never imagined...'

But it's more than that, because she has no accent it's so easy to forget how different our backgrounds are but she grew up in Asia and Europe, we have so few shared references. So I missed cues that might otherwise have drawn my attention to our age difference.

'Twelve years...'

She had told me about her first time, the older boy with the dick as big as a coke can. I was four when Claire had sex with him. It's no wonder she has had so many amazing experiences - she's had so much more time.

I saw Kwasi's face in my mind's eye, how he'd looked at me and Claire when I found out. He'd known, right then, that's when he'd figured it out. Both he and Wes knew...

I moaned aloud. Catching myself, I froze, but there was no one nearby, no one to hear. It was still early. 1st Ave smelled like curdled beer. I started walking again, head hung down - my whole body bent by mortification.

'Why didn't you call Kwasi?' I asked myself. 'I should talk to him...'

But even as I thought this, I knew why I hadn't. It wouldn't just be talking to Kwasi, and I really didn't want to talk to him and Darci about what had happened and I couldn't ask to talk to Kwasi alone on a Sunday morning, it would freak Darci out. I thought of Kwasi watching Darci and I, and shivered.

'Why am I the one feeling guilty?' I wondered. 'I should be mad, I'm the one-'

I blushed with shame thinking of the way I'd begged Claire to forgive me and licked her... My stomach ached.

'Jesus.'

Part of me still couldn't believe I'd done it - couldn't believe I'd done any of it - that I'd done it with my baby brother sleeping just 12 feet away in the same room.

'How had everything gotten so out of whack? How has everything gone so wrong? How had it all gotten... so strange?'

I thought of Claire trying to finger my asshole, how I'd squirmed and finally begged her to stop. I'd known she was just being playful. I couldn't help it if it made me uncomfortable - Jesus it made me want to roll over and die, to crawl out of my skin - but on the heels of the scene at the restaurant... she had seemed so embarrassed walking home.

We hadn't been able to really discuss what had happened, Wes had been drunk and so we'd put him between us, let him rant and sing while we kept him from falling. But when she'd opened the door for us she'd whispered to me.

"I wasn't hiding it from you, I thought you knew..."

But then Wes had shouted about the Mickey Mouse painting.

I had seen clearly how vulnerable she felt. The last thing I wanted to do that night was reject her. I would have done anything she wanted, why couldn't I just let her do what she'd wanted? And she had just seemed so hurt; like it had all come crashing down on her. My whole body ached with the idea that I'd wounded her.

I thought of the way she had curled up defensively away from me; as if she'd been kicked. I felt my throat start to constrict and stopped short to catch my breath. A woman who must have been walking just behind me glared in annoyance as she stepped around me and passed. I felt like I might faint.

"What am I doing?!" I wailed, and realized with a shock that I'd said it out loud. I looked around, but the angry woman didn't look back and there was no one else to notice. I took a series of deep breaths. My mind replaying the events of what I'd done with cruel fidelity; Claire curled on her side. Her back had felt so bony and ungiving, like a shell, but so fragile, so vulnerable.

Claire had never turned away from me like that, had never hardened herself against me. But I'd never hurt her before either. I don't remember what I'd whispered, I'd been so scared, even walking back from Chinatown she'd seemed... fragile. I didn't know what to do, I'd felt a rising panic. She hadn't asked me to... God, she'd never even joked about it, it had been the fucking dream. The dream had been so visceral and REAL - I had felt her cheeks against mine. The memory was an isolated fragmentary impression - but it had been so intense. The feeling of burying my face in her ass... I'd wanted so badly to make Claire feel good, to feel her open to me. It had been so different from the dream, which had been full of longing. The reality had felt like desperation.

I thought about it, there alone on the street, I could feel myself flushing with shame, but the truth is I knew I'd do it again if she asked me to. I'd do anything she wanted... more than that, I had done it because I had wanted to... that I wanted to still. She didn't need to ask me. Realizing that, how deep I'd gotten, how big this thing with Claire had become, made me queasy with fear. How much I wanted her. How afraid I was to lose her. I was staring at my hands. They felt like they were shaking, but they weren't.

I had never felt this way about Danny. I remember being excited, even turned on sometimes, but nothing like this. Early on I'd imagined sex would be something romantic that we would explore together, unfolding over time.

But soon enough he had complained of "blue balls" and begged me for hand jobs, finally taking my wrist and pushing my hand into his pants. I remember the shock and shame of feeling his stiff cock that first time...

And while his need to cum - for me to make him cum - was like some sort of pressure cooker or time bomb that was my responsibility to address; we both treated my own pleasure as irrelevant. I told myself I had a small sex drive, that I didn't care.

For a long time I told myself he was being respectful, a gentleman. Looking back on it now, I know that wasn't it. It's not just that he was uninterested in my pleasure. He told me he loved me but he was never interested in my goals, in my ideas or opinions. He loved the idea of me, what I represented, what I did for him; I was a trophy and a receptacle. I remember him calling a girl at school a "cum dumpster" and wondering if he said that about me when I wasn't around.

I thought about how, after making me cum with a touch of her fingertip, when Claire had husked, "Please Sarah, just touch my neck with your lips. Please," I hadn't felt any shame. I'd wrapped my arm around her naked waist and pressed my lips against the side of her neck, inhaling deeply. The old fashioned slippery scent of her hair, like pearls. I'd still been reeling from the orgasm she gave me, still short of breath. I'd wanted more, I'd wanted to feel her cum.

I knew what she'd wanted when she asked for my mouth. I felt myself starting to drool, there on 1st Ave, saliva running down my shirt.

"Jesus Sarah!" I looked around again, but it's early and the avenue is relatively empty, and again there is no one watching, no one cares. But I am covering my mouth with my hand, frightened I'll shout something else. 'Get a grip Sarah,' I tell myself - wiping my lip - careful not to say it out loud.

I was just overtired after a terrible sleepless night, the craziness of it all. Wes and Kwasi, and before that the horrible date with Roger, the confrontation with Claire's dandy fascist... it was all too crazy. My heart ached in my chest, like it was breaking.

I was clutching at my chest. My hand was looking for the cross my mother had bought following my first Communion, the one I haven't worn since leaving home. I wanted to pray, I wanted to ask God for help.

'No atheists in foxholes,' I thought mockingly. But the truth is I don't believe, I'm not sure I ever did, but I've wanted to. I wished with all my heart I did now.

Even in middle school the Church for me was already just another institution, like school, or hospitals, or the courts. A system with rules I knew I had to follow, rules I was very afraid to break. When I had started masturbating I wasn't afraid of going to hell, I was just afraid of getting caught, of the real things that would happen to me, not the 'magic' things. Maybe that's why all my early fantasies were of just that: an authority figure walking in on me, seeing what I was doing, making me finish, watching me do it.

In my earliest fantasies I was just naked, and it was usually an older girl who caught me. It had started with one of the older McNamara girls I think, I'm not sure which, but they had quickly focused on Michelle. Our next door neighbor's oldest daughter Suzy had been another object of these early fantasies as well. She was five or six years older than me and I worshiped her and her friends. When we'd first moved in she'd babysat us. She used to tell me the two of us were babysitting Wes and Kelly, that I was her Big Girl.

Her bedroom window had faced mine and I used to spy on her before she graduated high school and moved out. She had been so beautiful and so careless with her shades. I'd been fascinated with her breasts. They were like fat cones, with pink puffy nipples almost as big as her breasts themselves. I remember overhearing her with a boy once. It had been warm and our windows were open. I couldn't see them, but I'd heard them laughing and kissing - so much kissing. Then I'd heard him clearly say, "I can't believe I'm licking your asshole."

Later, after Danny and I started fooling around the fantasies had changed. I'd fantasize about a teacher or other authority figures - but always a woman - catching me masturbating. Ms. Day - who I looked up to and was so nice to me - had been so strict in my fantasies. "You can get dressed after you're done," I'd imagine her telling me. Or our principal. The girls track coach. One of the younger librarians. And then in college there had been certain upperclassmen and professors I liked to fantasize about.

Sometimes the fantasies had been cruel, Michelle McNamara making fun of my still tiny tits, my hairless pussy. Making me spread my legs, open myself up. Or our principal, Mrs Nash laughing at me while I begged to stop masturbating, making me finish in tears. But sometimes they were sweet. Suzy telling me how pretty I was, how much she liked my body. Or Ms Day smiling as I came.

In college I took it further, began my "excursions". It had started in my freshman year. An older girl named Rebekah was tutoring me. We had been studying in her room, off campus, when she'd had to go pick something up from one of her professors. She told me to stay and study, that she'd be right back. I remember laying on her bed and smelling her pillows. I had masturbated in her bed while she was away. I was sure she could smell it when she came back, that I had stunk up her room, but she never said anything.

I'd suffered for what I'd done in Rebekah's bed. I'd left her house hardly able to meet her eyes. Had gone back to my dorm and been unable to eat I'd been so racked with guilt. I had wept myself to sleep swearing I'd never do anything like that ever again. But I'd looked forward to seeing her all that week. And when Rebekah had excused herself to run an errand for her roommate, telling me to keep studying, that she wouldn't be too long, I'd masturbated in her bed again.

After that she always seemed to need to step out for something. I began to get suspicious that she knew. Looking back on it, I was sure she knew, that she was party to it. I'd wondered then if she had watched or listened to me. The idea of it had given me mind blowing orgasms, but if she did she never let on. But now I felt sure she must have. Her timing was always so... convenient. She never interrupted me, but she always came so close to catching me just after. Perhaps in some sort of twisted fucked up way we had been lovers somehow. I had cried at her graduation, she'd kissed me on the forehead like a child and told me I was going to do great things.

I masturbated repeatedly while sitting at one of my favorite professor's desks; Dr. Hendren. I was meant to be helping her grade papers. She'd leave me there and I'd jill in her chair with the door unlocked. Once the door had been open. I'd been terrified she'd catch me, but equally excited at the thought. I had liked to masturbate in the locker room of the field house as well. I'd do it when there were other girls around. Maybe just around the corner, where I could hear their voices and they could easily walk in on me.

I knew it was perverse, even sad, but it was very hard for me to make myself cum otherwise; difficult without the risk, but impossible without the fantasies. In college I'd gone on birth control. Danny and I had started having sex when we saw each other, but like everything else that was for him, I never came. I thought of my fantasies, and of my "excursions", as my sex life, as opposed to my sex life with Danny, which had never really feel like mine.

Often, as I approached crisis, to make myself cum, the fantasies would become extreme and crude. Like squatting over Claire's mouth, or wiping my fingers on Rebekah's pillow. But I never touched them and they never touched me in my fantasies - or almost never. It was just... having them catch me, having them see, making me finish.

Sometimes I'd fantasize that they'd hold me by the back of the neck while I masturbated, forcing me to look at myself, or grab me by the wrist and move my hand. Occasionally things would go too far, like my fantasy of watching Claire, of eating her out, but I stopped myself when they did. I'd always told myself that it didn't have anything to do with how beautiful they all were.

Fantasies aside, however, it was the real world consequences of getting caught that truly terrified me as a teen: getting a reputation as a slut or whore, or being forced to tell a priest about my sex life. Yet here I was walking down 1st Ave, like some kind of Catholic zombie.

I had sat in Port Authority for a long time after Wes' bus had left, my head in my hands, my heart racing. I'd never had a panic attack before, but I was pretty sure that's what was happening to me. At some point, a Mexican woman had come over and asked if I was sick or if I needed help. I'd told her no. Still hyperventilating I forced myself to stand up and walk away on weak legs.

I didn't have a therapist to call. Couldn't call Kwasi and I didn't have anyone else I felt like I could talk to about this. But then I remembered I had Father Mike's number. All I really knew about him is that he helped people for a living and he couldn't tell anyone what I told him. I might not like what he has to say, but at least I could safely tell him what I was feeling. He had to listen.

"You'll like him, Sarah," my mother had told me. "He's not like Father Tanner, you'll like him. He's very... kind."

So I called, but only after throwing up in a Port Authority bathroom.

In my daze I'd turned at 1st St and Father Mike's parish was ahead of me. It was plain and more than a little run down. I had called ahead from Port Authority, to make an appointment, and they'd told me which door to use, that Father Mike would be expecting me. But I saw a big burly priest out front with a group of men. He was wearing his collar, but with his shirt sleeves rolled up. He had bulging muscular forearms.