D for Dylan - 21. Chapter Twenty One

The high pitched ringing in my ears was accompanied by darkening tunnel vision, as I stood in the supermarket isle, staring at the soft drinks section like an enchanted cartoon character.

“Dylan?” Elle whispered, tapping me on the shoulder. “You’ve been staring at that water bottle for a minute already.”

I snapped out of it and shook my head. In the past few days I’ve been acting weird in the presence of lengthy cylindrical objects. Yesterday I zoned out in line for a subway sandwich when they asked me if I preferred a six-inch or a foot-long. The day before that, I was zombie-staring at the bunch of bananas in the fruit basket in our kitchen.

“What’s going on with you?” she asked, grabbing the bottle from the shelf. “Are you thirsty or something?”

I blushed heavily, mumbled some nonsense and pretended like I was getting a phone call.

“Dylan?” Elle called out.

“Sorry, it’s mom!” I mouthed apologetically, holding the phone to my ear and backing away from her. “Talk to you later!”

My awkward, nonsensical behavior clearly didn’t go unnoticed. To be honest, I did feel like a mess. Ever since that night at Liam’s house, I wasn’t quite myself. The weather outside cleared up nicely, it was fresh and sunny, beautiful colors of mid spring started to pop in the blooming cheery trees and a greener grass, but the beauty of awakening nature didn’t resonate well with a bloody shit storm raging on in my head.

All of my attempts at trying to process what Jake did failed miserably. I was waking up at nights, covered in sweat, gruesome pictures of Daniel’s corpse haunting me in my dreams.

How did I end up in this situation? How the hell did the most amazing, kind and supportive guy I ever met turn out to be a cold-blooded murderer? I was pissed at Jacob, enraged at him for shattering my rekindling faith in human decency. He was supposed to be my knight in shining armor, he pulled me out of a hole deeper than Mariana Trench, and somehow he too ended up stabbing me in the back. How could I’ve been so fucking blind this whole time?

The anger that I felt towards him reflected as frustration at my own stupidity for ignoring all the red flags about him. I was supposed to be smarter than that. I wasn’t supposed to be blinded by emotions, I had to keep a cold head on my shoulders. And even now, instead of doing that, instead of facing my problem and trying to come up with a safe exit strategy, I was digging myself an even deeper hole, by jumping in bed with my own fucking enemy.

Tell me a year ago that I will be having sex with Liam Henderson - I would’ve had a bloody diarrhea and a bout of emesis, simultaneously.

How the fuck did this happen?

I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror, when I returned back home that evening. I tripped on my own shoelaces and dove face-first on the wooden floor in front of the kitchen, when mom asked me how my sleepover at Jake’s went. I spent an hour showering, scrubbing off the permeating scent of Liam’s sweat and cum from my skin. Drowning myself in a hot, foamy bath, I tried therapeutic screaming under water, but that shit didn’t work - I still felt dirty and weak, like a cheap slut, succumbing to lust akin to a fucking dog in heat.

I was supposed to make him suffer, I wanted him to be in pain, and there were so many amazing ways for me to do it… Instead, I let him have his way with me.

Was I even better than a typical silly girl from the cheerleading team that Elle and I always made fun of? I’ve spent so much time ridiculing all the stupid girls that got fooled by Liam’s charms, and here I was, a fucking hypocrite, drooling after him and his big dick.

What the fuck was wrong with me? How could I even stand being in the same room with a guy that beat me like a punching bag, who betrayed me and caused me more pain than he’ll ever be able to fathom? I knew I hated him, that hatred burned within me like a beacon in the night, I still wanted him to fucking suffer for what he did, but the fact that my anger had somehow morphed into a sexual craving was starting to scare me.

As much as I wanted to hurt him, I didn’t feel too envious of Liam Henderson’s current situation. Whatever outcome the stupid motherfucker imagined for himself in the end, he should’ve known better where exactly he was dipping his toes. I didn’t force him into it - he wanted it himself, and something told me he didn’t quite realize how shitty of a situation he was in.

I pictured what would’ve happened if I had thrown a reverse-uno card on the table. Let’s say it was the other way around and I was the one in love with him, while he had no intention to take me seriously. The fantasy of that naive 15-year-old Dylan made true at a snap of my fingers - he’s in bed with his gorgeous best friend, whom he’s crazy in love with, living the life and enjoying every second of it.

It was getting uncomfortable to even imagine, hypothetically. What would have happened to me in that scenario? Eventually, Liam would’ve dumped me and moved on, and I would’ve been left heartbroken. I couldn’t fucking imagine anything hurting more than that - my splenectomy scars, fractures and bruises all took a few months to heal, but the devastation of losing the person you love, especially after getting a taste of having them all for yourself, would’ve simply killed me.

He told me he never loved anyone. He was going through the brand spanking new, first-time-ever curse of actually falling for someone. That stupid moron had no clue how thin the line he was threading actually was. If he wanted to find out first hand how much it will fucking suck for him in the end - he could be my guest. I gave him a fair warning. His fairy tale fantasy would crumble in less than two months, at the end of May, when we graduate. As soon as I’m done with Montgomery High, Liam Henderson can kiss me goodbye for the rest of his life.

Still, regardless of how much I hated him, I had to acknowledge one annoying, insignificant detail - he was absolutely fucking breathtaking in bed. My inexperience might’ve clouded my judgement, but I seriously doubted it. The things he did to my body, the way he made me cum, had shocked me to my core. I tried to downplay it, but the treacherous memories still threw me in cold, sticky sweat…

“Who’s texting you all day?” Elle asked, glancing at how I was playing with my food on the tray.

“Nobody.” I sighed, silencing my phone again.

We were sitting in the cafeteria and I did my best to ignore Liam - he was texting me all day, he couldn’t stop staring at me, and I was too scared to unwrap my chocolate pudding.

“He looks like he’s about to come and fuck you on this table.” Elle frowned.

“Elle!..” Pete coughed, choking on his French fries.

“What?! Just look at him!” she justified, making an indiscreet eye gesture. “He’s not taking his eyes off him...”

“Maybe he just wants to talk to you?” Pete asked, turning to me.

“I don’t care.” I scowled, looking away and shielding my face from Liam’s gaze.

“There are rumors going around, by the way…” Elle whispered. “Gina from the cheerleading squad told Swathi that her sister’s best friend overheard the ‘plastics’ in the bathroom the other day…”

“Wait, what?” I asked, loosing the chain of events.

“What’s so confusing?” Elle waved with her arms. “Pay attention! Anyways, there’s a rumor going around that Liam dumped Jess.”

“No way…” Pete gasped.

“That’s old news.” I puffed, rolling my eyes.

Elle squinted at me like an evil stepmother from Disney’s 1950’s Cinderella. I bit my tongue, realizing just how much I still had to catch her up with. After walking in on Liam and Jess fucking their brains out the other day, I was too frustrated and ashamed to handle a conversation with her. She did warn me not to go there, after all.

“Dylan?” she asked.

“He told me last week.” I hurried to explain.

“What else did he tell you?” she tried to fish out.

“Elle, you should calm down.” Pete suggested, glancing at his girlfriend.

“Why the fuck am I hearing about it from Swathi?” Elle complained.

“I’m sorry, I was just… all over the place, these past few days.” I mumbled.

Another buzzing sound came through in my pocket.

“Who the hell is texting you?” she asked again, now visibly worried.

I sighed, pulled out my phone and looked at the screen, immediately choking on the orange juice. Burning acid spilled out of my nares and I started coughing, covering my mouth.

I glared at the motherfucker sitting at the opposite end of the cafeteria, catching his wide grin.

“Jesus, you look like you just saw a dick pic!” Elle joked, tilting her laughing face to Pete for endorsement.

My best friend Eleanor Hastings had a very peculiar talent of hitting the bull’s eye, effortlessly, in her innocent suggestions. A few years ago she naturally assumed that Quinn Stevens had a bad case of trichomoniasis because she walked past her once, scratching her crotch in a rather boorish manner. Despite multitude of alternative reasons for Quinn’s questionable behavior, including pediculosis, for example, which would’ve made even more sense given intensely pruritic nature of that affliction, a week later Quinn’s boyfriend Bobby was diagnosed with nothing other than trichomoniasis, prompting their eventual public break up. A few days after my birthday, Elle jokingly alluded that Jake and I were having sex for two days straight, which ended up not only being true, but a commonwealth knowledge of Montgomery High, thanks to the perfect timing of her astute observation. Tyler McCormick was still whistling in my back each time I passed him in the hallway.

As the orange juice made it down my airways, my teary eyes looked at Liam Henderson’s twelve inch cock, traversed with a dense net of bulging veins and leaking a clear, viscous droplet of precum on the floor. I chose to lock the screen of my phone and hold my breath, leaving Elle’s shockingly accurate suggestion without my attention.

“Hey! Where are you going?!” she yelled, as I rushed out of the cafeteria, coughing like an influenza superspreader.

The smug, egotistical smirk on his conceited face tempted me to run to his fucking table and slap him in front of everyone. What an arrogant, narcissistic piece of shit! I got to the bathroom, washed my face and rinsed my nose clean of citrus juice. The damn thing burned like hell, I’ve never had it up my nose, and the experience wasn’t the greatest. I was riled up and angry, which was clearly the worst possible time for Liam to enter the bathroom.

“Hey, are you okay?” I heard him say.

He approached me from behind, and I felt the artery in my temple blowing up in fury, seeing his reflection. He was wearing a tight white shirt with a jacket and a pair of light blue jeans.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for you to choke on your juice.” he smiled, biting his lip.

“Fuck you, Liam.” I spat, dabbing my face with a paper towel. “It wasn’t funny!”

“Come on, it was a little funny!”

I turned around, ready to sack him in the face, but he pinned me against the sink, wrapped his hand around my neck and forcefully kissed me. For a moment, I felt like I hallucinated it. His large tongue brazenly invaded my mouth, rubbed against my own and brushed through my teeth, as his full lips latched onto mine and forced them to take on his shape. The smell of his cologne hit me in the nose, somehow overpowering the citrus.

“Mmm…” he moaned, as I pushed him away, “I’m tasting orange…”

“You’re disgusting.”

His groin was pressed into mine, I could feel the imprint of his hardon pushing into my thigh. He left my comment without a response, dove into the side of my face and started showering my cheek with soft kisses, slowly descending on my neck.

“When are you coming over?” he exhaled.

“We’re in the bathroom…”

“I don’t care…”

My hands were pressed into his chest, I felt his muscles rolling under his clothes.

“Send that shit again and I’ll kill you…” I moaned, shuddering when his tongue filled the dimple above my clavicle.

“Didn’t you like it?” he teased, leaving more wet kisses on my neck.

“No…” I gasped.

He groped my groin, wrapping his hand around the outline of my hard dick.

“You’re lying…” he snared.

“Fuck you…”

He assaulted my mouth again, and this time I dug into his jacket. We kissed deeply, he wrapped his arms around my back, his teeth tapping against mine, tongue sliding into my throat, massaging my fucking tonsils.

“Fuck…” I gasped, breaking away from his grip.

Elle was right. He looked like he was out of control. I didn’t trust him. Heck, I didn’t trust me neither…

“Did you break up with Jake?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“It’s been three days.”

“I know.”

“When are you gonna do it?” he pressured.

“I…” I uttered, bucking away from him, as he made another step towards me, “I don’t know yet. I have to think about it first.”

“What’s there to think about?” he asked, waving his arm. “Just fucking dump him.”

“That’s none of your fucking business.” I exhaled, shoving him in the chest, as he approached me dangerously close.

Dealing with him was starting to get annoying.

“Dylan, he’s dangerous…” he whispered, cupping my cheek with his hand.

“You aren’t any better...” I hissed.

He bit his lip and looked away. I wiped my face from his spit and pressed my arms against the sink, leaning in and hoping it won’t fall off. I glanced at my reflection and noticed a red rash on my neck.

“Did you just give me a fucking hickey?” I asked in disbelief, rubbing the purplish spot under my jaw.

He smiled.

“What are you, twelve?! What the fuck, Liam?” I yelled.

“I want you…” he groaned, stepping closer like a lion cornering his prey. “I can’t fucking wait...”

“You’re a big boy, you’ll have to fucking learn.” I said.

“Come on, can’t you just come over tonight?” he exhaled in my lips, grabbing my face in his hands again.

“In your dreams.”

“We don’t have to go all the way…”

“No…”

“I know you want to…” he teased, grazing my upper lip with his lower.

“Not as much as you do…” I whispered back.

He squinted and swallowed, pursing his lips and hesitantly pulling himself away from me.

“It’s okay.” he uttered. “I’ll wait as long as I have to.”

“Good boy.” I smirked, patting him on the cheek. “Feel free to jerk off.”

He took my jaw in a pincer grasp and planted an aggressive kiss on my lips again.

“You’re not getting rid of me.” he grinned.

“We’ll see about that.” I exhaled, breaking the strand of spit tenting between our lips.

When he walked out of the bathroom, I assessed the damage in the mirror. Aside from the hickey, I looked like a victim of a severe allergic reaction - my cheeks were red, lips swollen, eyes glistening, heart beating erratically, threatening to burst out of my chest. I spent a few minutes catching my breath and splashing my face in cold water, but the blemish refused to subside.

I shut down the faucet and watched the soapy water slowly drain down the half-clogged sink. My hand slowly pulled the phone out of my pocket and I unlocked it, glancing at the obscene picture he sent me.

I swallowed. The warmth in my lower abdomen started pushing and pulling in sync with my heavy heartbeat.

“Fuck…” I exhaled, locking the screen and shoving the phone back into my pocket.

I needed to focus. Large chills ran down the back of my neck, I was diaphoretic and felt weak in my legs. Liam was throwing me out of balance, challenging me, daring me to succumb to my desires and submit to him.

But I wasn’t a fucking animal.

On my way out of the bathroom, the door suddenly opened and in walked the person I least expected to visit such an unsanitary environment.

I stopped dead in my tracks, looking her in the eye, as she brushed the bathroom walls with a throughly repugnant look.

“What a pleasant surprise, Dylan.” she smiled, faking a courtesy. Her eyes briefly paused on my hickey, which made her forged smile disappear.

“What are you doing in here, Jess?” I asked, taking a small step back.

“I just came to talk.”

“Did you stumble on your way in? You’re in the boy’s bathroom.” I reminded. “Last time I checked, you didn’t have a dick.”

“Don’t be ridiculous…” she exhaled, taking a slow stroll along the vanity stands. “I always had one… Metaphorically speaking.”

She stood in front of me and gave me a demeaning look. Her gaze was slowly getting me nervous. Did she see Liam walking out of here? Is that why she came in?

“But you’re right, it’s fucking disgusting in here.” she spat. “Meet me outside, we need to talk.”

With that, she walked back towards the door, pinching out a paper towel on her way and using it as a barrier between her hand and the handle.

“We have nothing to talk about.” I said.

“I won’t repeat myself.” she seethed in sharp irritation. “I will see you outside.”