Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

Cass grabbed his hands before he could find her first. She held his strong fingers in her hands and pressed them up under her shirt, against her, and when his fingers spasmed against her she knew it was instinct that guided him and that he would still work against it and so she leaned into his touch, arching her back and moving so that her breasts fit themselves to his cupped hands and he had no choice. That’s what it felt like to her and she knew it must be the same for him, that he had no choice as his fingers found her nipples and circled and seized.

From there, there was no thought. She plunged her fingers into his hair and lifted him to her so that his face was pressed against her and his mouth and lips and tongue were eager now. He didn’t fight. He was hungry and he gave up any attempts to restrain her and held her to him, his hands under her arms. She felt his fingers splayed against the bones of her rib cage, imagined it expanding with the breaths she sucked in, noisy ragged breaths that were not graceful.

The things he did with his mouth made her writhe harder against him and the ride was no longer orchestrated by her, it was a course they both followed because there was no other. Their hands went to their clothes in the same instant and twined together as they pulled and yanked and tossed aside. He let go of her to pull his boxers down over his legs and the loss of his attention-even for a second-enraged the need in her and she took him in her hand and rubbed him against her hottest, wettest folds so that when he gasped and returned his hands to her sides he rocked into her just as she drove herself down on him and there was no hesitation, no halfway, nothing but trying to make him more inside and him trying to plunge farther.

She bucked extravagantly, knowing it was coming, the thunderous crest that could not be stopped now, it was as sure as the sun blazing in the morning or thunder after lightning rips the sky. She leaned back and put her hands on his legs so that her body tilted away from him. If there was any light at all in the tent she knew that he would see her body, long and strong and bent back as she rode him hard, and that seeing her that way would send him past the point where he had any control at all, and knowing that-even in the dark, even where they saw nothing, where the loss of one sense only heightened the others so it was their sharp breaths on the silent night, the slap of sweat-slicked flesh, the grunting and syllables that were only parts of words-all of this spiraled tighter and tighter and she squeezed her eyes shut and ground her teeth together and threw herself into the chasm, past the treacherous cliffs and over the pain-dusted edges and into the nothing.

It was a long and spectacular fall and partway down he met her there and it was like they seized each other midair so that when the final crest splintered into blinding sensation, she was aware of him there with her and it was new.

It was new, it was like nothing she’d ever felt before, a feeling of being out of herself and part of him just for those seconds, her energy stretching and flickering and it seemed incredibly dangerous, like she might snap and not return to herself, but she let it happen anyway, and afterward she lay on top of him and waited for the part that had left her to come back, and the part that was him to leave her, and when it didn’t happen right away she began to panic but even her panic wasn’t enough to make her lift her body away from his, because she lay in a state of such exhaustion and spent and total dissipation that moving was impossible.

Much, much later she felt his hands in her hair, fingers gentle against her scalp, working the strands into tangles, and he said, “They’re applauding,” and while she tried to make sense of his words she marveled at the feel of his voice, the way it formed in his chest and rumbled against her cheek.

And then she realized that he meant the sounds outside the tent, which only now entered her conscious mind: a smattering of clapping and laughter and one distinct voice saying, “That’s how it’s done, brother,” and another saying, “Could everyone shut the fuck up and let the rest of us sleep.”

Cass burned with mortification. She didn’t remember making any sound-in those final seconds her hearing seemed to have gone the way of her vision, as though the darkness had stolen it, too-but she must have cried out. She didn’t do that, ordinarily, but she remembered the cry building in her throat right before everything splintered and it must have been loud enough to wake up the people sleeping nearby.

Her greater worry-the fact that the man beneath her was slowly turning back into Smoke-was too much to think about now. She pushed her face into the hollow of his shoulder and willed herself not to think about it.

When he said, very softly, “Sweet dreams, Cass,” she said over and over in her mind, “I do not hear you. I do not hear you.”

I do not hear you, because you aren’t really there.

IN THE MORNING SHE WAS ALONE IN THE TENT and she thought: Smoke is a man who comes and goes quietly.

And then she thought- Ruthie . Today was the day she would find out how to get inside the Convent, and she would search for her Ruthie.

Do the next right thing, Pat’s voice- Hello, my name is Pat and I’m an alcoholic -said in her head, all reasonable insistence, the voice of a hundred meetings in the church basement. Pat listened; Pat never judged. Pat was bald except for a silver fringe on the back of his head and looked like he ought to be a grandfather, and Pat just kept listening. What if I don’t know the next right thing, Cass had demanded-had whined really, if she were to be honest-and Pat had said, It’s only one little next right thing, Cass, don’t think so hard, and the guy with the red hair-she couldn’t remember his name now because he didn’t last more than a few months-had muttered, Man plans and God laughs, which had struck Cass as funny and kind of clever, in context, a lot more clever than any of the stupid A.A. phrases…but by summer that guy was gone and Cass was still there so who was right, in the end?

So she would do the next right thing, and that thing was: Find Gloria.

She took the little bucket of personal supplies to the bathroom and was relieved to find that there was no further charge to use it, because Smoke had done all their trading and she didn’t know how it was done and she didn’t feel like letting her ignorance show. There was no sign of Smoke and Cass only saw a few other people trudging between the tents, shivering in hoodies and flannel shirts, and she realized that it was earlier than she’d first thought, maybe six or six-thirty on a late-summer morning.

When she returned to their tent she saw that Faye was standing in front of it, holding a steaming mug.

“There you are,” she said with a sly smile.

“Sorry, I was just at the, uh, ladies’ room.”

“Word is you two put on a bit of a show last night,” Faye said conversationally, and Cass felt her face redden. “Hey, you provided everyone some entertainment around here. And you got something that did you good. So chill. You ready to go meet Gloria?”

“Yeah, just let me get-something,” she said, and poked her head into the tent. Really, she only wanted to see if Smoke had returned, but nothing looked disturbed. The covers were still tangled. Her pack was where she left it.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

Faye led her through the camp. They passed the merchant stands, where people were stacking and arranging their wares-their toothbrushes and playing cards and packets of aspirin and Theraflu, their paper plates and toilet paper and candles and cans of beans and condensed milk and Chef Boyardee-and righting overturned camp chairs and cleaning up litter from the night before. A fire burned in a grate near where the remains of the bonfire smoldered, and coffee boiled in a pot on top, and Cass felt her stomach growl. Well, maybe later she could ask Smoke to buy her a meal. And coffee-a cup of hot, thick coffee. But for now she would concentrate on Gloria.