Bud Smith - F 250

The cop laughed, “Get your paperwork in order, okay? And get the hell outta here. Right now.”

Then he let me go. No insurance card. No registration. In a town infamous for evil, blood-drinking cops, with nothing better to do on a Saturday night then be evil and drink my blood, he just let me leave.

I drove us home in silence.

But when we got in the driveway, I pushed the cassette tape back in. It started to howl and pop. Made all kinds of distorted noise. June leaned over and put her whole body onto me. For the first time, she kissed me deeply. All the world and silly shit it insinuated was of importance was completely obscured.

The lights were off.A small stream of street light came through the venetian blinds beside the pullout couch. There was no moon. We’d sipped all the poison of the world and somehow survived.

Clothes in a pile. A ceiling fan wobbled, uneven and ineffectual. There was no music. No words. An anxious, unnerving buzz throbbed through the pitch black. We were wrecked.

June and K, topless, lay warm and volcanic across me — lips colliding, tongues deep, hair falling onto my belly. Nails dug into my shoulder. I tried to imagine if June had nails. I couldn’t remember. Little coos. Excited birds.

I was flat on my back, they were meeting in the middle over my chest. A hand ran up my right thigh and lingered slowly. I wasn’t sure who it was. I felt around, trying to identify who was who, but it felt pointless.

My hand was on someone’s ass. I felt down lower. The legs moved up. A knee came to rest on my hip. I felt the space between the thighs — soaking wet. I rubbed slowly. Wet panties. Both girls felt similar in that darkness. Lithe. Smooth. Hairless below their eyebrows.

Someone’s hand touched the side of my face delicately. A kiss on the lips, biting the lower one … hard. Our teeth clicked together. She smelled like wild cherry soda and cloves. Another set of lips went down my chest, sucking the flesh over my heart, pecking down my stomach. Another hand rubbed me through my boxer shorts.

“Oh, you’re so hard.”

A mouth kissed my thigh then licked its way up.

“Come here. Come help me with something.”

My boxer shorts were pulled down, taken off completely, and thrown into the deeper darkness beyond. I felt a tongue running on me like electricity. So good. I closed my eyes and saw more darkness. One mouth wrapped around me. More kissing on my leg.

“You try.”

“Oh, I dunno.”

“Come on.”

There was a pause, a tension. Then I felt another mouth wrap around my dick. Slow, tentative.

“Keep going.”

A hand pushed down on the back of the head. The slight scrape of teeth. A small gag. Gasps from coming up for air. They were taking turns kissing and sucking, and I had my hands on the back of both of their heads — just held there, forcing nothing. It seemed like they were having fun. I could have died right there. That would have been the highlight of my adult life up to that point. I shuddered.

Someone stopped, came back up, and started kissing my mouth. I thought it was K. I kissed down her neck. A sharp collarbone. I started sucking on a nipple. A small moan. Surprising. I reached down carefully and slipped a finger inside.

“Go slow, please. Slow.”

I was surprised.

She guided my hand out and said, “No, just kiss me. Go slow.”

The mouth sucking my cock went deeper and deeper and then stopped. I felt the lips kissing my hand between restless legs. A girl was going down on her girl. I kissed a mouth. She hummed back at me. I heard a noise — the front door opening, footsteps on the creaky stairs. We froze, as if we’d be exposed.

The lights flicked on, appearing underneath the crack of the door and shining through the keyhole — might as well have been a fire hose turned on us.

“Shhhhhhh,” I said.

“Shhhhh,” they each joked in return. “Shhhhhh, be very quiet. Don’t make a sound. We’re hunting rabbits.”

One of the girls climbed on top of me and rubbed my dick back and forth across her pussy. It was wet and slick. She put me inside. She began to slowly move, grinding me inside.

Upstairs, the refrigerator door opened. Glass bottles rattled around.

More kisses on my neck. I felt around, rubbed someone between the legs. Whoever was on me stopped, and I rolled onto the other one.

“This alright?” I asked. There was no response.

The legs spread, and a pair of hands rubbed my shoulders. I slipped my dick inside, and there were hands that pushed against my chest.

“No, stop.”

I went along with it. Stopped.

“I can’t do this.”

Someone sprang up from the bed and walked out of the room in a huff of embarrassment. The door opened. Bright light flooded in from the hallway. There was a pile of laundry next to the washing machine. The door shut. Dark again. The mouth returned to me, continued to suck. The room was slowly spinning. I wondered if I was gonna get sick. Too drunk. Far too drunk. At the same time, I was gonna cum. I felt it rising. Getting close. A tongue licked the head of my cock, and then I felt a hand rubbing me off — faster and faster.

“You’re gonna make me cum.”

A deep sigh of pleasure from the darkness, “Go ahead.”

Whoever she was closed her lips around my dick. I came. A pulse. Another. Then it was over. She rose from the pullout couch, and the springs sang out. I breathed a heavy sigh.

The light was on in the hallway. I heard someone crying, softly. Someone else spat into the trashcan.

“That wasn’t fair.”

“What is?”

I fell asleep. Too far gone. Upstairs, the TV switched on. Top volume. The Conan O’Brien show. Triumph the Insult comic dog. The world was spinning in a slow orbit around the sun, which was very far away and a part of no-one’s life I knew.

We were at a mcmansionoff the highway. A job Steph got for me through the quarry. She’s too kind. I had to build a waterfall into an in-ground swimming pool.

The swimming pool looked perfect, and not just because K Neon was swimming slow laps in it for exercise.

Feral, mouth breather that he is, leaned on his shovel and stared down at K in the pool.

“I could be a champion swimmer if I gave a fuck,” Feral said.

“You’re the worst swimmer and person that I know.”

The water was crystal clear. A coral reef-patterned tile, wavering below the surface, was barely disturbed by K’s perfect strokes. She told me she’d been a lifeguard at the college pool, that she’d been the captain of her high school swim team.

“I’m diabolical in the water,” said K.

We all can’t be that way, but watch us try.

Also: watch us drown trying.

The house had a bamboo shoot tiki hut with a kegerator in it. That made the job all the better. “Must be 5 o’clock somewhere” sign. Jimmy Buffett concert tickets in a frame. Corona beer souvenirs galore. All of us had red solo cups full of beer. The sun was just getting hot. It was 11 a.m. The cicadas were screaming in the trees. The flowers were fat and heavy. A boombox so loud, it was distorted and ugly. But the lemon sun was out and made everything beautiful.

I felt a little speck of happiness returning. My recent bruises were lightening, slowly, but at least it was something.

I had my shirt off and was getting a deep tan while I worked. Over on the deck, June was reading a paperback book in her red bikini that matched her dyed head. Beside her, on another chair, was Trish, who was leafing through a magazine. She was in a one-piece swimsuit with a dress bottom and resembled one of those hippos from Fantasia, which I only really realized because she kept saying it. She’s cool. She knows how to make fun of herself. We can all get better at that and become more beloved as a result.