Alissa Nutting - Tampa

I have to hand it to Buck; he wasn’t one to sit idly atop a power dynamic and let it expire. His hands moved up to rest on my waist and the previous confusion in his face gave way to a carnivorous excitement. “You certainly can.” He smiled. I looked down and saw his penis had begun to swell against his pants with an embarrassing immediacy, as if he’d just pulled a cord to initiate inflation. “I was beginning to wonder when I’d see you again.”

With that, he took me by the hand and led me to his bedroom, where a prompt interchange of compromise began. My pants were already unzipped; when he reached slowly down into them and felt the absence of underwear, his mind seemed to register every permission slip he could possibly think of as being signed and sealed; seconds later he’d pulled them down completely and was kneeling in front of me, running his tongue along the connecting divide between my leg and pubis. I closed my eyes and tensed up; the feeling of his tongue didn’t even register as a human body part—I felt like my thigh was being stroked with the belly of a moist toad. Foreplay with Buck wouldn’t do; I had to convince him to move things along. “Buck,” I managed to say, “I’m more of a get-right-to-it girl.” He looked up, slightly confused, so I took the initiative and lay down on the floor facing away from him, curling my arms and knees in toward my chest in a fetal pose that would still allow for entry. It was the same position I’d assumed on my bathroom floor the last time I’d gotten food poisoning to help ease the cramping.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his stumpy hands running up and down over the circumference of my ass.

“I want you inside me,” I said, but the inflection came out wrong—it sounded like I was trying to convince myself. So I managed a follow-up line so awful that I was only able to say it through clenched teeth: “Please don’t make me wait any longer.” I found myself wishing I’d employed a bit more strategy before we’d gotten undressed. I could’ve asked Buck for a minute alone to use the restroom, then guzzled down his mouthwash and aftershave in the hopes of getting a buzz off their low alcohol content.

“Your wish is my command,” he whispered. I felt a gagging tug at the back of my throat but managed to swallow it down with a quiet burp. He quickly fumbled off his shirt and pants, each sound a tortuous reminder that we hadn’t even started yet. There was a small slapping sound of hand on skin, the equivalent of Buck having to prime gasoline into a lawn mower engine by pulling the cord a few times, then finally, with relief and a bit of pride, he kneeled down behind me on the carpet and said, “Okay. I’m hard for you.”

I might’ve laughed had I not felt two of his fingers, unable to resist a small checkup, do an exploratory rub across my vagina. “Let me wetten things a little,” he said. I felt his face and breathing move closer toward my exposed flesh; it was all I could do to force myself not to rear up and kick him in the jaw.

“No, don’t!” I yelled; my voice had all the urgency of someone calling up to a suicide jumper from the street below. “Sorry,” I said, recovering, “I’m weird about that.” The thought of his tongue on my genitals seemed like a contamination I’d never be able to shake off. I could already feel each place he’d managed to lick me earlier—the path of his tongue left a skein of saliva that dried a bit too tightly on my skin.

“Do you want some lube?” he asked. “I think I’ve got some around here, somewhere.”

“Buck,” I said, turning my face to his with the best portrayal of excitement I could manage. I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the wall—I was smiling far too widely, with an unnatural number of teeth exposed, as though I was doing an impression of an overly enthusiastic game show host. But I wanted to make my impatience to finish seem like an impatience to begin. “Shut up and stick it in.”

With that he nodded and placed a hand on my back, using his other hand to make joystick corrections to the left and the right as he tried to align himself and eventually succeeded.

“Is that okay?” he asked. I began pushing back toward him with an animal energy, half trying to push him off me and half trying to make him come. I reminded myself of what was at stake—by the time we finished, he needed to be absolutely convinced that it was him I wanted; I hadn’t come to the house to hang out with Jack. I began performing a satirized impression of a cliché pornography soundtrack—every hyperbolized moan one would produce in order to make fun of contrived ecstasy. “You’re frisky,” he exclaimed, and moments later, “This is incredible.” He then divulged an obvious confession: “I’ve been thinking about doing this since the second I saw you.”

It was only then, as his thrusts became more pronounced and jerky and his hands began to slide farther and farther down my torso in an attempt to gain leverage—he wanted to somehow try to move even deeper inside of me—that my craving for escape caused my head to loll sideways and notice the door was wide open. Why hadn’t Buck closed it? Did he want Jack to hear us? If so, I wondered about Buck’s motivation. Either he wanted his son to know about his sexual conquest out of some depraved sense of paternal pride, or it was related to what Buck had walked in on earlier—that moment an unconscious part of his brain was likely still working to convince itself it hadn’t actually seen.

Near the end Buck started audibly grunting, a throaty, primal groan that sounded like a marine completing an obstacle course. He seemed to be losing steam; his thrusts were more erratic and further apart, as though he had to recharge between each one. I had to close my eyes when I saw it then in the doorway, unmistakable—the top half of one of Jack’s white athletic socks, his toes peeking closer toward the door’s entrance than he realized.

“Jack,” I whispered inaudibly, the terror of possibility causing my hands to clench knuckle-white into the ground. I immediately began the future conversation he and I would have to have in my head, preparing a list of rationalizations: I really didn’t have a choice, Jack. Your father saw us together, and I was pulling up my pants. If I hadn’t done what I did, I would be in jail right now.

His toes stayed fixed in the doorway until the very end, when Buck let out a protracted wail that sounded like a large draft animal readying to sneeze. The noise startled me; my head snapped upright and my eyes landed on the shelf above Buck’s bed that held a series of bowling league trophies. When I looked back, Jack was gone.

I was hoping that the two of us would get to sneak a simple good-bye, no matter how small—a wave and me mouthing I’m sorry , or perhaps I’d even resort to the juvenile phrase he was so adamantly fond of— I love you . But his door was shut when we emerged from the bedroom and I worried about forcing contact before I left. If I made an excuse to go into Jack’s room, there’d be the risk that Jack was inside crying hysterically. And he certainly might, in his grief, begin a loud confrontation. Instead I let Buck give me a farewell kiss on the neck—“You’re a goddess,” he gushed; I simply turned and opened the door to leave. The sound of the garage door lifting as I started my car felt traitorous. Where had that noise been an hour ago when we needed it?

“Hey,” Buck called. “Can I get a ride up the street to the mechanic?”

I rolled my window down a crack and peered out at him. “I’m sorry; I can’t. If my husband saw us, he’d put a bullet between your eyes.” With that, I rolled the window back up and peeled out of the drive.