Taste Me

If I had any brain cell left at that moment, it would've told me this was no coincidence and no clumsy fall. Everything about this was an inch-perfect calculated move. But alas, I had no working brain cells anymore.

Because in that same blink of a moment, her hand that was squished between us squeezed my tit, somehow finding my nipple and grating it through my clothes, while her mouth opened and she licked a small patch of skin on my neck, the one concealed by her head and hair. And then in the continuation of that blink, she bit my neck and pinched my nipple, simultaneously, until I yelped.

"Ouch!"

"Oh, sorry." She started pushing herself off me, but not without a final lick and pinch. "I'm so, so sorry. Are you Ok?"

I stared at her face as it retreated. An expression of fake concern was plastered on it, but her flushed cheeks and dancing honey eyes told me a different story.

I nodded my head once, words failing me. My brain cells were still AWOL, either electrocuted by the million-watt shock that had just coursed through my body or radiated by the nuclear blast that had exploded inside of me. Either way, they would be gone for a while.

She reached out with her hand and grabbed mine, "Are you sure?" Her concerned and apologetic smile hid a more genuine grin.

I nodded again, brain still in mush and unable to form coherent thoughts.

That's when his annoyed voice rang and brought me back to my senses. "She said she's fine, come on, let's go."

Her expression morphed the moment he started speaking. Darker, more stoic. The flame in her eyes disappeared, so did the grin on her face. Obviously, she'd already snapped her hand away, as if my skin was molten lava.

I turned to face him. Obnoxious frown, disdainful look, virulence masquerading as virility, and plain toxic presence. Everything about him was vile. How could anyone love this? How could she love this?

That question had stunned me for months, and this encounter didn't do much to clear the mystery. She was charming, cute, thoughtful, and modest -- everything he was not. Even the "opposites attract" theory didn't make any sense here. The incompatibility was clear as day. She couldn't be blind to that or to the way he transformed her into a worse version of herself.

He barely glanced at me as he urged her on. Deep inside of me, a voice roared, "I make your girlfriend come every night because you don't," but I kept my mouth shut. What good would that do? She was already following his order and moving on. Of course she was.

"How rude," Paige's comment barely registered.

I sat in stunned silence, contemplating the end of this surreal moment, and, realistically, the end of an "us" that had only burgeoned in my fantasies. I could not go back to the way things were before. No matter how much of a masochist I was, I couldn't pretend my feelings didn't exist anymore, and I'd be doing a disservice to myself if I agreed to keep the charade going. No, I deserved better.

For once, I would do the right thing and tell her it was all over. She could get her smut from online erotica or hire a professional to talk to when she needed more personal help. I couldn't hurt myself like that anymore, give her my heart every night only to wake up and see her crushing it the moment he called. I deserved better.

A certain sadness washed over me as I got up from my seat and started chatting with Paige as if nothing had happened. You know that feeling, when you realize it's really over with someone and you start grieving the end of your relationship before you even break up with them, before they even know?

The sadness accompanied me for the next hour, as Paige and I walked out of the movies, picked a restaurant nearby, ordered our food, and ate it. It was there, an underlying feeling of loss and grief that punctuated every breath, every movement, and every word I said. I wanted to cry, bawl my eyes out, or shout, or do something to ease the pain, but I couldn't.

My smartwatch alerted me to a couple of messages, but I ignored them. I knew they were from Rachel; I could even guess their content. But I didn't care, not now. Later on, when I got back to the privacy of my home, I'd call her and end it for real. Until then, I had an hour or so to process my emotions and make sure I didn't waiver when telling her off.

Halfway through our last glass of wine, with our desserts already eaten and the table nearly cleared, Paige used a moment of silence to stare at me and state the obvious. "What's wrong?"

I gulped. I knew Paige would notice, but I had hoped I could avoid the question. I wanted to deflect, but something deep inside me burst and I just sighed out, "Everything. Everything. Where do I start?"

Over the next twenty minutes or so, I spilled out the details of how Rachel and I started talking, how our relationship evolved, and how we'd just met for the first time by chance and spent part of the movie communicating in Morse. I spared her the R-rated descriptions, but alluded to there being something a little extra in our late-night chats. I concluded with my final resolve, to end it all this very same evening.

Hearing the whole story said out loud like that, I realized how silly my behavior had been and how reckless I'd been for getting tangled up in such a basic affair. How could I let it go this far? And what -- did I honestly believe this would end in anything but a disaster for me?

Throughout my talk, I'd glanced a couple of times at Paige, but didn't catch anything but a stoic expression on her face. The fact that she hadn't erupted into colorful anger at my foolish behavior was disconcerting, to say the least.

"Wow," she finally said after a few seconds of silence. "That is... Wow."

"I know, it all seems so, so, so stupid now. My only defense is that she's an amazing, wonderful person, well, uh, when she's not around him," I quickly added.

"I don't know what else to say except end it, tonight. Now if you can. Nothing about this is healthy."

"Trust me, I know. I've been lying to myself for months, pretending this was nothing, but it's just..." I felt the vibrations of my smartwatch again as it alerted me to a phone call from Rachel. "Look, now," I pointed at the watch, "she's calling me, and I want to pick up -- what the fuck? It's like, she's manipulating me like he's manipulating her. She's not doing it consciously, I'm sure," I waved off a concerned look from Paige, "she's really too nice for that, I'm still a good judge of character. But that doesn't change the reality that she has me in the palm of her hand and she can beckon me whenever she wants, and I'll come running."

"If she's too nice to be manipulating you, then what is she doing? What does she think this is?"

Clearly, Paige didn't trust my judgment in this case, and I wouldn't blame her. I'd asked myself that same question over and over again.

"I think she's stuck in this loop the same way I am. Or was," I corrected. "We both stumbled into it by mistake and we didn't know when to get off."

"Or you got off too much," Paige half-snickered, punching me right where it hurt the most.

"Paige..."

"Sorry, I just don't buy it. There has to be a moment where she fucking asked herself why she was talking to a friend several hours a day, and having sexy conversations at that, then going through thousands of shenanigans to hide it from her boyfriend of five years. I get that you meet someone by mistake and sparks fly and there's palpable chemistry. I get that you're taken and want to keep them around, so you make a bad decision once or twice pretending it's nothing but friendship. But to make this your entire life for months? She had to know she's stringing you along and she kept doing that. You don't do that to a friend, heck you barely do it to a vibrator!"

Oh fuck. To be compared to a sex toy? That's what I was, though, right? That was my pathetic reality. I was a very convenient sex toy.

It made sense, all of it. Paige was saying aloud what the voice of reason inside my head had been screaming for months -- not the vibrator part, but the rest. It helped to hear it, though, because it cemented my decision.

Tonight. This ends tonight.

My watch vibrated again. I glanced at it, fuming, ready to pick up and tell Rachel to fuck off once and for all, when I saw that it was a text message.

"He slapped me."

Three words, that was all. My eyes read them before I could stop them.

I was LIVID. In less than an instant, I was on my feet, phone in hand, waving a concerned Paige off, and storming out of the restaurant while calling Rachel and gesturing for a taxi. I didn't stop to think that I didn't know the address.

She picked up.

"ARE YOU OK??? WHAT DID HE DO???"

"Hiii," her voice came, calm and seductive, the vocal fry of that iii barely perceptible, but potent enough to shift the entire mood of the conversation. "Why did you do it?"

"Do what?" What the fuck were we talking about now?

"All of it. Sit next to me. Let me take your hand and keep it. Use Morse to talk to me."

She sounded surprisingly calm. My blood was boiling and she wanted to talk about our Morse chat?! Wait, was that message a ploy to get me to call her? I dropped my taxi-waving hand and started pacing in front of the restaurant.

She continued her questions, this time whispering seductively but with a hint of apprehension, "Why did you taste me?"

"What the fuck, Rachel! You said he slapped you! Why did you lie to me?"

"I'm not lying, he really did, but that doesn't matter for now." I was fuming again. What on earth was happening? She just kept her calm. "Answer me first, please."

Answer what? Her questions came back to me. They had barely registered the first time, but their magnitude hit me then like a bulldozing tank. I was gonna end this now, right? So might as well let a hint of the truth out. Maybe she'd grasp how hurt I was and why I was about to put a final stop to our talks.

"You know why." The resigned defeat I heard in my voice nearly ended me.

"I want to hear you say it."

For a moment, it was just her and me, her suave voice tickling my senses like it always did, making me say things I didn't want to say, and do things I didn't want to do. For a moment, I was enthralled in the illusion again. Then his face loomed in the invisible space between my ear and her mouth, and I was reminded of how none of this was true. We were an illusion.

"I can't say it. You know I can't. Not as long as..."

"What if I told you I'm standing a block away from his apartment and we just broke up?"

"Is that why he slapped you?" I was raging again. How could he lay a hand on her? And how could she be so calm? How could she go back to this abusive bastard after that? Oh, I knew she said they'd broken up, but that info barely registered. This wasn't my first rodeo. They often broke up; it never lasted more than two days. Maybe three now that there was a slap in the mix.

"Kind of."

"So he really did..." Heaven help me, I was about to commit a murder tonight.

"It's fine," she dismissed my concern. "That's not what I wanted to talk ab..."

I couldn't help it, my mouth ran off half-mocking, half-shouting, "Of course it's fine. Of course you'll forgive him and forget what he did and you'll be back together in a few days. And next time he'll hit you for real, and you'll still take him back. For fuck's sake, Rachel. I can't take this anymore."

"Take what?! No please, tell me how highly you think of me!"

If I felt a pang of guilt over my rant, it quickly dissipated when I reminded myself of how right I was. I was saying this for her own good; she could take it or leave it.

"Rachel," I sounded more condescending than friendly -- not the tone I was hoping for. I made an effort to soften it a bit. "You always reconcile. Always. Please stop lying to yourself. And to me."

"No, not this time. You're wrong." The sad determination in her voice was new to me. I had always detected a bit of smug defiance and underlying incertitude in similar situations before, hints that she'd cave and take him back the moment he apologized. But they weren't there this time.

Still, I sighed. I had no answer to that. The future would prove me right, but I didn't want to stick around for that. I was out, remember? Now I just needed to hold my big-girl heart in my hands and tell her in no uncertain terms that we were done, whatever that "we" meant to her.

But that's the moment she chose to drop another earth-shattering, asteroid-colliding, world-twisting, life-altering bomb.

"I don't think he'll take me back after I told him I've fallen for someone else. Actually, let me rephrase for accuracy: I don't want him back after I fell for someone else."

"Oh... there's someone el..."

There was no reality in which I imagined her even entertaining the idea of not being with that worthless dickhead, let alone liking another human or -- mind blown, quote unquote -- falling for another person.

"You, silly." Her voice went up two octaves and she caught her breath, waiting.

What.

The.

Hell.

I froze. My frantic pacing froze too, mid-step. I hadn't fully shifted my weight to my left foot, but my right foot had already let go of its responsibility to hold me. Somewhere between the two, my body had no idea where to rest and I lost balance, then barely caught myself by reaching out to a nearby wall.

The silence stretched. Rachel breathed out audibly, and added in a shy and insecure tone I'd never heard her use before, "I can't possibly be with him when all I think about is you, can I?"

"Uh... No." My tongue had rebooted so quickly, my brain not so much. This changed everything, didn't it? I got closer to the wall and slumped on it, one hand clasping the phone to my ear, the other holding my forehead and head.

Was this really happening?

Rachel continued, "Yeah, so, I broke up with him. Like you said a million times, none of this was healthy to begin with. I was blindly ignoring the signs and willing to go along with it for a while. I was trying to convince myself that this was as good as it got, but even I didn't really buy that anymore in the last few weeks. You know, deep down, I think I really believed that anything else or anything better was an illusion. Like my parents' relationship. And my mom's parents."

She took a deep breath and I did the same. I knew she hadn't grown up in a picture-perfect loving home environment and I suspected this was probably affecting her judgment of any relationship, but I hadn't mentioned that to her. I never felt I had the right to psycho-analyze her like that.

She kept going, seemingly emboldened with every word and admission. "I've wanted to leave him for a few weeks now. I didn't tell you, I was still coming to terms with it myself. All of it... which includes you. And then I saw you tonight and... Fuck. The timing, you know? It was like a sign. And I had to touch you, and I wanted more, and then I had to taste your skin," she took a second to breathe aloud -- or moan, I wasn't sure -- "and I just couldn't deny the truth anymore."

She snickered and continued, "I'm not myself around him; I'm a shallow, worthless, scared, joyless husk of a human. I know it. I can feel it. All of my confidence and joy leaving my body each time I see him. But I'm myself with you because you're amazing. This is what healthy infatuation is like, right?" She didn't wait for my answer. "When we started using Morse, my heart nearly beat out of my chest. I never felt that before. Safe and excited and seen at the same time. I knew it was all over with him. So over," she stated firmly and emphatically. "No point in keeping the masquerade."

She stopped talking. A heavy silence filled the moment between us. I was still processing everything, unable to believe or let myself believe. The cold of the freezing wall behind me was seeping through my bones, but I couldn't move away. I didn't trust my legs to hold me. Nor could I trust her words enough to let their warmth sneak to my heart.

This was all too beautiful to hear, but so are illusions.

"I'm sorry, this must be a lot for you. But say something, please?" She whispered.

"I..."

A confused sigh was all I could muster. I had prepared a whole speech in my head to end things with her, I was ready for that conversation. But this? I had no ready-to-go words for this. I should've been happy, and I think a small part of my heart was dancing and somersaulting inside of me, but the bigger, smarter, more thoughtful part of me was still trying to make sense of the madness.

"I know you're worried," she said to fill another silence.

Well, that's the most diplomatic way to express what I was feeling.

She continued, "But I assure you, I'm not leaving him for you. I'm leaving him for me. I deserve better, I know it can be better," she insisted on the verb.

Wow, OK, that wasn't something I'd had the time to consider yet, but thanks for putting the question in my head.

"I'm leaving him for me," she insisted. "You just happened to shine the light and show me it can be better. And," she paused then came back with a more uncertain voice, "whatever happens next is something else entirely."

"You... sure?" Those two syllables were all I could muster to ask the most important question of all. Everything else seemed secondary now.

"I've never been more sure of anything. And I have two slap marks on my face to remind me to run away at the first warning signs of abuse in any relationship. Who knows what he would've done in a year or two?"

I was fuming again. "Fuck him! Fuck him! Are you really ok? Are you really out of his place and away from this shitty, fucking, abusive asshole?" I continued muttering more insults under my breath. For once, I wasn't afraid to use some colorful language to describe him in front of her. He deserved all of it and more, and she wouldn't come to his defense anymore -- right?

"Yeah, I told you, it's fine. I'm done. I'm out. I never have to come back. Good thing he never let me keep anything in his place. Not even a toothbrush! Isn't this what you were trying to help me see all along?"

"Yes..." A strand of my thoughts wandered back a minute or two, to that moment she'd said she did this for her, not me. Could I really believe that? That I wasn't some conveniently placed and timed rebound? She was straight, or at least she had believed that before. I didn't want to be the brief lesbian experiment in a temporary 'men suck, I'm done with them' phase. Only one way to find out. "So now what?"

I held my heart in my hand and prayed. I had regained some of my senses and could somewhat see straight through this entire clusterfuck. If she wanted us to meet right now or even soon, then this was all meaningless -- even her heartfelt confession. I wasn't going to be her instant rebound or her tension-release valve. I deserved better than to be treated like a human vibrator, as Paige had so bluntly put it. No. If this was to ever go anywhere, she had to process her previous relationship and break-up. And we needed time to process the change in our relationship and readjust to this new dynamic. And most of all, I needed time to trust her and trust she wouldn't hurt me.

"Well, now, I take a taxi and go back to my place, which thank heavens I never moved in with him, and I wait for you to go home. And we talk as we always do. If you want, of course" The shyness of that last part didn't escape me.

Oof. I let go of the breath I was holding. "Yes. I want that."

We weren't out of the woods yet, but this was a sensible start.

"And then I take my time to untangle the messed up shit I just got out of and get my head fully unfucked and straight again. Well, not fully straight I suppose." I heard her smile without seeing it, and I could detect a hint of flirting in her tone. I smiled too.