Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

DeMarcus unbuckles his belt and starts undoing his pants, it’s like he has four hands because he’s getting his pants down and turning me to face J at the same time, pushing me gently onto my knees in the middle of the seat, he’s behind me reaching around me to pull off my pants too. He can’t find the button and I’ve got one hand on J’s thigh and one hand on the headrest behind him, I’m concentrating on reminding my drunk self to not grab the steering wheel to hold steady. My pants are too big, I’ve lost weight from doing blow after work. DeMarcus can’t wait so he just pulls them down, they catch briefly on my hips but he tugs and then he’s pushing inside me and I’m pushing back. J I’m in it, he shouts over the music and I watch J’s face, he doesn’t look at me right next to him, keeps his eyes on the road and says Tight? I feel DeMarcus slow down so he won’t come and he says Shit fuck sweet pussy. Then he asks me do I want to get J in on it and I don’t say anything I just take the hand that is on J’s thigh and I rub his cock through his track pants. He still doesn’t look at me. Suck on me, he says. I bend down and DeMarcus backs up, still inside me, until his back is against the door so I have room to be like a stretching cat between them. I suck on J long and right and he starts breathing deep and making sounds and he takes one hand off the steering wheel and puts it in my hair, puts it on my head, I can tell he wants to push on my head. I go faster hoping he won’t and then DeMarcus starts moving again. I count when I give head or I repeat something over and over in my mind, one-syllable strokes. Sex. Is. The. Same. But. The. Dishes . I say to his cock. This is mean head I’m giving now. It’s firm and I’m not letting it be wet but this J won’t even look at me so. There was a man once to whose penis I said I. Love. You. So. Much. I. Would. Do. Any. thing. For. You. Can. You. Tell . and every time I got to that Tell I would moan Mmm and he would say Oh my God, what are you doing to me but this is not that man. This is me in a truck on Highway 183, this is me drunk and high, this is me doing and being done. J says, I wanna switch and I feel the truck slowing down. He stops the truck on the shoulder of the freeway and rams the gearshift up the column to park. I barely have time to get my mouth off him before he’s out of the cab and then there’s a damp thwack as DeMarcus pulls out of me abruptly, he opens the passenger door and crosses in front of the truck, trotting, he doesn’t button his pants just lets his long work shirt hang over everything. His brother is in the cab next to me pulling my hips down on top of his cock before DeMarcus has even gotten into the driver’s seat.

DeMarcus glides the truck along the shoulder until he can get back on the freeway and without being told I take his cock into my mouth, tasting myself. I. Am. An. An. i. mal. Good. Then. You. Fire. Her . I think about my daughter, how her eyelids turn lavender at night. I think about how my friend Hal, who also works at The Restaurant and also has a daughter, told me I should never do anything I wouldn’t want her to do. How one afternoon he said to me You know Rie, we’re doing what we want. If we wanted to be with them we would. We have to face that and decide what’s next. If I wanted to be with Blair I would move to Houston and work at Starbucks if I had to. It’s just money. She. Had. Twins. Mine. Died .

J is hardly moving back there behind me, although he’s as stiff as his brother. I feel DeMarcus turn to look at him and I wonder what he sees to make him say J? J, you with us? Then I feel J drop down to the seat from where he’d been up on his knees against me, he moves so fast his cock goes sideways as it comes out of me and it hurts. I stop sucking on DeMarcus to turn and look at J, who’s leaning against the passenger-side window. I think he may have passed out. Girl, you don’t have to stop, says DeMarcus, so I put my mouth back on his cock and give him the good head with my hand and the wetness until he says Ahhh, shit! Oh shit, girl! Don’t stop, don’t stop, and then he lets it all go. There’s nowhere for me to spit it and I don’t feel like swallowing. If I don’t swallow while I’m taking it, if I hesitate, then I never want to. I have an undershirt on so I pull my work shirt over my head. I wad it up under my mouth like a big handkerchief and soundlessly push the semen out of my mouth and into the shirt, careful not to spill any. The shirt already has steak sauce, wine, butter, and sweat on it. Roll down your window, I tell DeMarcus, and when he does I lean across him and look behind us to make sure it’s not going to catch on somebody’s windshield or antenna and then I let it fly. So the stories are true, smiles DeMarcus. You off the chain, girl.

After five days of driving we stop in front of their house, which is small. The porch light is on and I see vinyl siding, a tricycle on the sidewalk. DeMarcus and I get out of the truck and walk toward the house, leaving J in the cab. Where are we and whose is that, I ask, pointing at the tricycle. Shh, he says, opening the door. In the front room an old man is sitting in an easy chair holding a can of Budweiser and watching television. Hey Pop, says DeMarcus. Where J? says the old man. Sleep in the truck, answers DeMarcus, I be back with him shortly, how you? The old man grunts in response, he never looks away from the television or acknowledges me.

Want to shower? DeMarcus asks me. I say How much? and he looks at me like he doesn’t get it. When he said Want to shower? I thought He wants to put me somewhere where I can’t see what’s about to happen with J and I thought I want to shower so much and I thought Some of it’s gonna stick and I thought How can I ever get back from here and what came out was How much?

Do I smell like fries? I ask, trying to act like I am keeping it together, trying to pretend I didn’t just say something incomprehensible. The Restaurant is Zagat-rated and our party spent over four grand on one dinner that involved compotes, reductions, infusions, compound butters, a coulis, a pan jus, but somehow the smell of French fries is what I always carry home on me. He puts his nose in my neck and inhales tenderly. We’re still standing right there in the living room in front of his dad. Crème brûlée, he says. Come on, I’ll show you to the ladies’.

This is the thing about the service industry, you can get trained to be slick and hospitable in any situation and it serves you well the rest of your life. Once you figure out that everything is performance and you bow to that, learn to modulate, you can dissociate from the mothership of yourself like an astronaut floating in space. That’s how you can show a fucked-in-your-truck girl down the hall to the ladies’ and tell her her neck smells like crème brûlée in front of a zombie dad while some freebased flesh you’re related to waits for you to carry it inside. That’s how the crunked girl can get in the shower like she’s told and stand over the drain and pee and not think about what might happen next.

I lose track of time in the shower. I wash my vagina and then stand there letting the water run over me. I’m hearing the water like it’s a waterfall, loud and like I’m inside it, when I’m high I hear sixteen layers of sound. I hear someone come into the bathroom, hear a belt buckle hit the floor. DeMarcus pulls back the shower curtain and steps in behind me. Clean yet? he asks. How’s your brother? I ask. He be all right, just gets carried away with the shit sometimes. Whose tricycle is that outside? I ask again. Excuse me, he says, stepping around me to get near the water, turning his back to me. My son’s, he says finally. How did I not know you have a son? I ask. He turns around but his hands are over his face, he’s rubbing his eyes. He shrugs. Work is work, he says. Don’t everybody got to know everything.