Alissa Nutting - Tampa

When I heard the agreed-upon knock—one single rap—I unlocked the door and stood behind it, out of view to anyone in the hallway as the door swung open and Jack entered. After locking the door he immediately turned to place his mouth upon mine. We hadn’t seen one another in nearly a week and a half, the longest we’d gone since our affair started. He wasn’t interested in the slightest bit of foreplay, the poor, desperate creature. In less than a minute he’d unzipped and lowered his pants; I leaned against the sink and extended my ass toward him. Upon entry he gasped, the relieved sigh of homecoming, and buried his face in the back of my head, roiling his cheeks against my hair. We were done in less time than it would have taken to complete a legitimate bowel movement.

Afterward, his panting lips found my ear. “Do you want to wait a second and do it again?” he whispered. I did, but I worried a line was forming outside—the longer we took, the greater our chances of having to exit to an audience.

“We shouldn’t be too long,” I warned. “That’ll have to hold you till you’re back at your dad’s.”

Jack’s expression instantly hardened, as though he’d been insulted. “You’re not seeing him while I’m gone, are you?” There was a hint of outrage in his voice.

“Of course not. I told him I have far too many family gatherings to attend.” I gave Jack a frisky poke in the ribs and he laughed with relief.

“It sucks,” he said, shaking his head. “My dad is crazy about you. Usually he’s kinda ‘whatever’ about women. I knew he thought you were really good-looking but I didn’t know he’d get all gaga.” He zipped up his pants and paused, hesitating to add, “He talks about you all the time.”

I gently grabbed the collar of Jack’s shirt, tilting my head to the side and letting my hair fall across my right shoulder in a way I knew to be flattering. “Jack,” I said reassuringly, “he doesn’t even know me. He has no idea who I really am.”

This thought made Jack smile—subtly at first, but soon he broke out into a wide grin. “Yeah.” Jack nodded. “He sure doesn’t.” We gave one another a final kiss, nearly choking on the force of our own needy tongues, before I opened the door. We’d reasoned that if someone else was waiting, I’d try to ask the location of a store as a distraction while Jack crept out. But the woman planted outside was squat and hunched over a walker.

“Here,” I said to her loudly, directing Jack out behind my back, “let me help you.” I stood in front of her, a concerned citizen, and slowly guided her toward the door while his thin teenage frame dashed out and off.

Christmas Day with Ford had the effect of his seeming to be in cahoots with Jack—every gift he gave me was some type of boudoir garment I couldn’t wait to wear for Jack, from satiny thongs to lace bustiers to crotchless teddies. “Ford!” I was able to exclaim upon opening each package, my voice truly resplendent with expectant glee over the way Jack’s mouth would drop. “This is downright nasty.” The ice cubes in his glass of whiskey clinked as he brought the cup to his face to water his leering grin.

I knew an initial viewing session of the garments was unavoidable, so I took a great number of sedatives and washed them down with cranberry mimosas; Ford had placed himself in charge of deep-frying a turkey, so I had no real duties for the day other than to remember to continuously dab a Kleenex at the drool forming in the corners of my mouth and serve as a veritable blow-up doll for Ford to take his festive cheer out on. We both passed out after dinner, Ford from tryptophan and myself from a more complex hurricane of chemicals, and by the time he woke me up making jokes about the Cool Whip originally intended for the pumpkin pie, I was in a twilight state of cyclical consciousness. I managed to put on the French maid–inspired bra-and-panty set (Ford had included a small pink feather duster in the box that he wanted me to use to tickle his cock) and began spouting loose phrases in French I remembered from college ( Peux-tu m’aider? ). There’s little else I remember about this particular celebration of Christ’s birth. The next morning I woke up sore with the raging thirst that follows a night of obliteration, but with very few painful memories. That erasure was the gift I gave myself.

It was a situation we couldn’t have foreseen. The Sunday afternoon prior to the start of spring semester, Jack called to say Buck had taken his car in for an oil change. What we didn’t know was that the wait at the mechanic’s was going to be hours. Since the shop was just blocks from Jack’s house, Buck decided to walk home until the car was ready. Instead of the loud and slow mechanical crawl that usually warned us of Buck’s arrival and added a generous thirty seconds from the time Buck pulled into his driveway to his entering the house, there was only a tiny click of a key, nearly imperceptible, and the soft closing of a well-sealed front door. Buck was already walking through the living room by the time we heard him whistling. We were on top of the kitchen table, Jack positioned behind me in a deep thrust; there were open containers of holiday leftovers that we’d been using as body paint strewn everywhere—cranberry sauce, brown gravy, pumpkin pie—and our eyes opened wide in mutual terror as Jack jumped down and yanked on his shirt and a pair of gym shorts; his boxers were crumpled up on the floor over by the stove. I was able to put on my bra and secure one of its three clasps, get my shirt over my head, and pull up my pants. When Buck’s figure rounded the doorway, he saw the disheveled appearance of Jack’s clothing, my pants hanging open unbuttoned and unzipped, and the carnage of our edible foreplay atop the table. As his gaze met mine, I felt my hands, which were holding the top of my unzipped jeans, begin to lightly shake.

No one said anything. I could see Buck’s mind working—he knew what he’d just seen, but he didn’t want to have seen it. He wanted a loophole, a flimsy cover story he could bury his doubts under so there didn’t have to be an emergency.

Standing, I slapped my bare stomach. “You’ll excuse my appearance, I hope,” I said. “I had to unzip these puppies and let my gut breathe. I need to take it easy on the leftovers.”

There was a brief moment when he didn’t react at all, seemingly deciding whether or not to follow my lead. His left eye began to tic, as though the scene before him was simply a slideshow experiencing technical difficulties—he was trying to move forward to another image, but we were stuck on this one. I watched his field of vision move from Jack’s neck and collarbone, lightly stained with traces of foodstuffs, over to the table, then finally rest back upon my unzipped pants. These were puzzle pieces Buck badly wanted to rearrange so that they formed a different picture.

“You certainly don’t have a gut,” he finally said. But he wasn’t smiling; he wasn’t fully on board yet.

What else could I have done? I walked over and placed my arms around his neck, my greatest show of affection to date, cringing as the side of my cheek landed on the wiry pad of chest hair that often spilled from the top of Buck’s shirts. He seemed to take great care to always have this curly fur exposed during the daytime, as though it needed photosynthesis to thrive. “I’m glad you’re home,” I said to him, trying to whisper but knowing that Jack would hear no matter how quietly I talked. Jack would have to understand, though, and hopefully also feel a sense of gratitude—I was about to martyr my loins on the grotesque altar of Buck’s four-post bed, all so our escapades might continue. “Jack and I were just having a snack while we waited for you. I don’t have long but I thought maybe if you’re free for a bit we could spend some time together… I could finally give you your Christmas present?”