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pedroshotwifey · 5 months

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Do you think you could write a nervous Joel fic... like he's older and a single dad and hasn't dated in a REALLY REALLY long time...but he's still really sweet, maybe he has to stop and eat reader cos he's about to cum too soon or something 🤷‍♀️😭

Hey, babe!! So I hope this is what you were hoping for! It's super tender and I did end up listening to Hozier for a good portion of it, so do with that information what you will 😅

Also, I kind of did something a bit different and wrote it more from Joel's perspective, but it's still in 2nd person (pronouns = you)! Pls lmk how you feel about it ❤

Pairing: Older Joel Miller x afab!reader

Tags/warnings: Age gap (not specified), piv sex, oral sex (f), vaginal fingering, multiple orgasms, established relationship, (almost) premature ejaculation, accidental love confessions 🤭, self deprecating Joel™, big dick Joel™, kissing, stuff I'm probably forgetting

W/C: 1.9k

Summary: Your and Joel's first time together turns into so much more.

What Matters

“Are you sure, baby?”

Joel watches as your eyes flick up to him, only kindness and patience in them. Even as you smile warmly and wrap your arms around his neck to pull him to you, he still has a sense of cautiousness in his movements. You’ve probably lost track of how many times he’s asked you if you’re sure.

“Yes, Joel, I’m sure,” you laugh breathily.

You’re both lying in his bed, completely bare. There’s a soft summer breeze coming in through the window and rustling the sheer curtains. The sun’s going down, but just barely, causing a perfect golden hue to coat the room. He can’t help but think that you look even more gorgeous than usual in this lighting.

Joel tries to ignore the nervousness in his stomach as he softly kisses your jaw and nuzzles up to you. He’s not stupid, he knows that you know he’s just trying to waste time, but you let him. You’re so fucking sweet like that. Always making him feel so wanted and appreciated. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be with you in this way, but that he’s worried he won’t be perfect for you. He wants to be able to show you affection in the same way that you show him.

But what if he can’t?

You’re younger, after all, and he’s not been with a woman in so long. Maybe not since Sarah’s mom. If that’s the case, it’s been about fifteen, sixteen years. Point in case, you’re probably used to boys who can last longer and can make you come every time. What if he can’t? What if it’s been so long now, that he only lasts a couple of minutes?

It terrifies him, the prospect that you may be disappointed in his performance. What if you decide to leave him because he’s not enough to get you off? No, he realizes, you would never do that. You’re so good, so thoughtful and generous and patient. You’d wait for him, help him get back to the point where he used to be.

But that’s not what he wants. He wants to be good for you now.

“Joel?”

His name falling from your lips has his head raising back up. You look into his eyes with a desperation that he simply can’t ignore.

“Please,” you whisper before planting a feather-light kiss to his lips. He nods slowly before he can think about it.

“Alright, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

And he does, he knows it. He just hopes he can do it right.

You’re already prepped. He spent probably half an hour fingering you to orgasm even though you had begged for the real thing each time you fell apart on his hand. It’s another thing he was worried about—being so big. Joel’s not a super cocky man by any means, but he is aware of his…attributes.

He watches you carefully as he grasps his cock and guides it to your slippery entrance. Your eyes flutter shut as he pushes in, giving you about an inch each time he thrusts. His jaw goes slack once he’s about halfway in. You’re so fucking warm and wet and inviting. He keeps going, trying to keep his breathy whines at bay. He’s again reminded of just how long it’s been since he’s felt something other than the palm of his hand around himself.

“Shit, baby,” he breathes as he bottoms out. He closes his eyes in concentration and lets his head hang next to yours. He already feels like he might blow his load at any second. You bring a hand up to cup his head and thread his curls through your fingers, holding him close. His breathing is heavy when he lifts himself back up to look into your eyes.

His heart seems to skip a beat when he sees the adoration you’re looking at him with. It kills him every time. And no matter how many times you tell him that he deserves all your affection, he knows he’ll still find a lingering doubt in the back of his mind. There’s a reason the two of you have only been “together” for about four months even though you’ve been shamelessly flirting for about a year.

It was just too good to be true. For such a sweet, gentle thing like you to want a rough old man like him. He was never the one to initiate anything, but he knows you’ve been aware that he had his sore eyes set on you since you met. How could he not? He’s never met anyone so kind and considerate. It was impossible to deny you of him any longer when it was one of the only things you’ve ever wanted for yourself.

“You okay?” Your honeyed voice reaches his ears—or his good ear, rather—and he smiles at you.

“‘Course, baby. Jus’ gotta give me a second, alright?” He can feel his cheeks getting a bit rosy at the confession. “It’s been a minute.”

You nod, still no hesitation or any sign of regret. God, what did he do to deserve you?

Once he collects himself, he pulls out just barely, and a groan tumbles from his mouth to mingle with your soft moan. He’s already starting to sweat from the effort of not coming too soon as he starts to push into you at a slow but rhythmic pace. You wrap your arms around his broad shoulders and tuck your head into his chest as you whimper with his thrusts.

“You feel so good,” you whine.

“Fuck, sweetheart, so d’ you. “Like goddamn heaven.” And you do; overwhelmingly so.

He cradles your head and lowers the two of you even more to deepen his thrusts. He knows he’s found your spot when your breath catches and you start to tighten around him every time he pumps his hips. Unfortunately, this makes it a lot harder for him to keep his composure.

“H-honey, I have to pull out,” he grits out. He’s so embarrassed, it hasn’t even been five minutes. He won’t last long enough for you to come before him.

But you just nod into him, even though you must be devastated by the loss of your orgasm. “It’s okay, Joel,” you breathily assure him.

He pulls out and squeezes the base of his cock, out of breath. He doesn’t meet your gaze as he starts to apologize.

“I’m sorry, baby, I—”

“Joel,” You stop him by carefully grabbing his chin and forcing him to look at you. “It’s okay.” You nod, waiting for him to do the same before you continue. “Take as much time as you need. I love you no matter what. This does not determine—”

You both realize what you said at the same time. Joel’s eyes widen and his chest feels like it caved into itself. Your lips stay still, parted in the middle of your sentence. Joel doesn’t realize tears have gathered in his eyes until his vision starts to blur and a smile spreads across his face.

You love him. You said it. And he believes you.

“I love you too, baby,” he whispers and lets his forehead rest against yours. “So damn much.” Fuck his age and whoever might see a problem with you being together. He wants this, and you want this, and that’s all that matters.

Then you’re both laughing shakily, pressing kisses to each other’s lips. He only stops to start trailing them down your body instead, watching you writhe as his mustache tickles your bare skin.

“Joel, p-please,” you beg quietly. Joel just huffs a small laugh through his nose as he lays himself between your legs, ignoring his protesting knees as he admires the entirety of you laying out just for him. You look fucking beautiful covered in a thin sheen of sweat atop his sheets, needy and panting all for him.

He doesn’t waste too much time before putting his mouth on your sweet pussy, his tongue dragging up your slit to flick at your clit. Joel moans at your taste, sending vibrations racing toward your swollen bud. Your hips buck as your hands fly to grasp at his hair, tugging lightly and making his eyes roll back.

He feasts on you like his life depends on it, worshiping you with all he has. He takes turns in running his tongue up you, fucking you with it the best he can, and suckling on your clit. He looks like a damn mess as he does so, his eyes not leaving your cunt unless he’s watching your face contort with pleasure. When you make eye contact with him, he knows he must look fucked out and desperate just based on the way you groan and lay your head back.

It doesn’t take much for you to get to the edge, and it takes even less for him to push you over. You let out sharp, whiny sounds as he sucks on your clit and slips a couple of fingers inside of you to grip on to. Your entire body goes tense, and Joel has to resist the urge to smirk against you as you shake with the force of your orgasm.

By the time you’re coming down, he’s back over you and slipping his tongue inside your mouth to share your taste. You moan into the kiss and pull him closer as he once again glides his tip into your cunt. Just as he had hoped, the distraction calmed him down enough to hopefully give him some more time.

You both melt into each other as he bottoms out, the tip of his swollen cock hitting your cervix and making your thighs squeeze his torso. He starts at a faster pace than last time, too deep in his lust-filled haze to even try to slow down now.

You pull away from his mouth to start leaving love bites on his neck, making his cock twitch inside of you with each pinch. He can feel you smile against his skin, and knows that you’ve found his secret. He does like a little pain with his pleasure. You keep going, sucking and biting marks before licking soothingly over them and moving to the next spot. You taste him like you’re addicted, like you could never possibly get enough.

It still doesn’t take him as long as he would like to before he starts to feel his balls drawing up and his thighs start to shake. His head goes foggy as he tries to hold on for you, but it’s too fucking much. He can’t hold it off when you feel so good around him. It’s like torture to stave off his orgasm when he’s thrusting into your soft heat.

“Where d’ you want me, honey?” Joel asks you, his voice strained.

“Inside,” you whisper against his neck without a second thought.

And it throws him over. He groans your name as his body stutters and his balls empty, coating your walls with his milky spend. It seems to go on forever. Each time he thinks he’s almost done, there’s another spurt and another wave of pleasure that tugs him deeper into euphoria.

When it does end, he lets himself half-collapse on top of you. You embrace him with welcoming arms and the two of you catch your breath together in the now dark bedroom. He only pulls out once sleep threatens to take the both of you. A shower, snack, and a glass of water later, you both snuggle up together and fall asleep with content smiles and full hearts.

*****

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be-good-to-bugs · 2 years

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#the bin #just released that since my other sister is coming to live here im gonna be able to play splatoon 3 bc she owns it #theres a lot of bad things happening rn bc of my dad being the worst™ but theres nothing i can do to stop them from happening so at #least theres some good things too. i hope he diesnt destroy my things. hopefully we can get someone to take the cats awhile bc if not we #are bringing them all to a shelter besides the ones coming here. in the event that happens we are bringing 1 extra bc we've had her 7 years #i really hope that doesnt happen but unfortunately it might. if we just leave them then he wont care for them and theyll all be gone #so either way ill never see them again. if we do have to take them to a shelter i wont even get to say bye bc im not going with :(#at least ill have asbestos by the end of the week and probably omen and/or coffee. definitely asbestos though. i miss him so much #everything kinda sucks right now. im glad my parents are finally gonna split but im sad it might come at the cost of pets and belongings #my mom wants to keep the pets but they cant have them where they live now. i wish my dad wasnt such an evil person #sorry for person posting again. im just stressed that i might never see some of my cats again. i live scooter and bibben so much :(#this was supposed to be a positive post. whoops. its hard to feel happy right now. byt uh. splatoon! yay! ...

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babyleostuff · 13 days

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𐙚🧸ྀི 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲'𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐢𝐬 "𝐦𝐨𝐦"

domestic fluff. established relationship. sulky and pouty seventeen. dad!svt + mom!reader.

s.coups

choi seungcheol - whiny™, pouty™, sulky™ - would never forgive you, he’d treat it as the biggest treason against him (as if it was your fault that your baby decided to say “mom” as their first word). he spent so much time repeating the word “da” and “dada” that he was 99% sure one of those would be its first word. but when you heard “ma” coming out of your baby’s mouth, and not “scoups is the best father ever”, cheol was so so dramatic about it. he refused to acknowledge you for the next week, which turned out to be quite problematic as you had a literal small human being to raise together.

jeonghan

your baby turned out to be as much of a gremlin as his father, so of course - even though jeonghan spent hours on saying different versions of the word “dad” around your baby - it did the exact opposite. it said a loud and clear “ma”, as if trying to get back at his father for… whatever reason. jeonghan wouldn’t be as dramatic as coups, but he’d still talk your ear off for some time, about how unfair it was and how you probably manipulated the child to say “ma” instead of “da”.

joshua

for some reason a lot whiner about that than you thought he’d be. you had a feeling that the baby’s first word would not be “dad” (and that was definitely not because you took your time to repeat the word “mom” around it) (joshua did the same when you weren’t around, just with “dad”) (so it kind of turned into a silent competition of who had more influence on the baby’s brain i guess). so when shua “lost” he turned into a big drama queen - not really that bothered by the “ma” coming from his baby, but at losing against you.

jun

he just straight up panics for some reason, because what do you mean his baby is talking now??? when it was just this big 🤏🏼 couple of weeks ago??? (it’s still ridiculously small, especially when he’s the one holding it, and any other person wouldn’t say that the baby was talking per say…). jun is just really overwhelmed by how fast everything is going that he doesn’t pay too much attention to what the word was exactly. maybe that’s just because he never really cared about what it’d be in the first place.

hoshi

immediate beef with the baby. soonyoung didn’t just spend these past weeks saying “dad”, “dada”, “da” and any other variant of the word for it to say “ma” in the end. the audacity of his firstborn to say anything other than “dad” was unbelievable, and hoshi took it upon himself to try and erase the word “mom” from its little brain and replace it with a proud and loud “dad”. well - that did not work, and whenever soonyoung tried to make the baby repeat the sound “da” he got a “ma” every single time. he was sure his child had a personal vendetta against him.

wonwoo

not bothered by it at all. to be honest wonwoo didn’t even catch what the baby had said, or tried to say, he just ran as fast as he could to get the camera BECAUSE HIS BABY JUST SAID SOMETHING MORE THAN JUST A BABBLE!!! he’d spend the rest of the day with his little one in his arms trying to make it say “ma” over and over again, smiling like an idiot every time he heard that cute little sound. (after a while, though, he’d be like “okay that’s enough, now say “da”).

woozi

something in him melts when he hears a faint “ma” coming from his baby. did he hope that its first word would be “dad”? sure. was he going to be dramatic over the fact that it wasn’t? nope. at this point, it’s still surreal to jihoon that he’s holding a literal child, his child, in his arms, so what it said didn’t really matter to him. it wasn’t like he could force it to say “dad” anyway, so why waste his energy on being dramatic over it? the baby still had so much time to learn all of the words in this world, and he was more than happy to wait for a “dad”.

could not care less, period. the baby’s first could be “poop” for all he cared, and he’d still jump around the house screaming his lungs out that his child just said its first word. in fact, seokmin pushed the “mom” agenda more than the “dad” one, because in his mind - you deserved it more. besides, just because the baby said “mom” first didn’t mean it loved him any less, and with how many “baby guidance books” he had read before the baby was born, dk knew that the sound “ma” was just easier to say for the baby.

mingyu

you had to give it to him - gyu really tried his best not to show how much it bothered him that its first word wasn’t a sound resembling “dad”. he didn’t want you to think that he was disappointed by your baby’s first word, and deep down he knew how irrational it was for him to sulk over something that neither of you had control over. but the pout mingyu had on his face whenever he held your baby told you just how much he wished it had rather said “da”. gyu quickly got over it - he wouldn’t let something as silly as that distract him from the fact that your little one just said their first word.

minghao

actually, he’s over the moon when he hears your baby utter a quiet “ma”. there’s no other person that deserves this more than you - you, who carried that small human being for nine months, who spent hours in the bathroom throwing your guts up, who went through all that pain. you gave hao everything he could’ve ever dreamed of - love, safety, and a family, so there’s no part of him that’s disappointed in the baby’s first word.

seungkwan

on one hand, he feels so proud and so happy - boo never knew his heart could be filled with so much love for such a tiny human being as when he heard its first word, but then again… of course most fathers hope that their baby first word would be “dad”, so there is some disappointment there. but after he sees your bright smile when you're holding your little one, and how excited you got by the “ma” - all the disappointment vanishes. there’s no point in being sulky over something that he has no control over.

vernon

he was so caught off guard when you suddenly started freaking out over your baby, and when you told him that it had just said “mom”, vernon did not believe you. he was like “na ah, it was just another babble.” (he was just in denial) (what do you mean his baby is talking now?). so he spent the next hour kneeling in front of the baby and trying to make it repeat the “ma” again so he could hear it too (turns out his child is very stubborn and only said “ma” in your presence).

dino

you were sitting in a double rocking chair with your baby, when suddenly you both heard a tiny sound, awfully resembling the sound “ma”. chan could not care less about it not being a “da”, he was just so happy to hear your precious bundle of love say something. besides, chan never really cared whether “mom” or “dad” would be the baby’s first word - all he wanted was for you both to be safe and healthy, so if it decided to say “ma” first then he was more than happy to keep repeating the “ma” for the baby.

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lxvvie · 3 months

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Call of Duty, Father's Day edition:

Just fatherly things, or how you honor the men in your life on this special day.

Capt. John Price - Price never asks for much, just your safety and happiness, but the kids wanted to give him presents for Father's Day, so you do. A new hat that looks like all the others but more expensive, a new mug for his tea, and kisses galore on his chonky cheeks. What more could the Cap'n ask for?

Gaz - Kyle just wants to hold his family in his arms, so he does. He didn't think he'd make it back in time to be here with you guys but he did and he's so damn happy. Now he and the little ones can get caught up on the latest gossip.

Alex Keller - It's not too often that he gets to do this. You all enjoyed his favorite breakfast with him: a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It's worth the sugar rush you know Keller and the kids will experience afterward.

Soap - Soap's been meaning to help his girls with their cheer practice so you honor him by... letting him be the bottom of the pyramid. With his cheer uniform on. And Whiskey keeps licking his face. You took a photo and he'll never live it down. The wee ones laugh every time.

Ghost - The Missus™ achieves his dream of sleeping in today with his girls right beside him. There's Simon, his big arm wrapped around his kids who're cuddled up against him, and Pup by his feet sleeping peacefully. He'll wake up to a wonderful gift courtesy of his girls: a pink shirt that says Princess Daddy in glittery letters across the chest, and it's adorned with a tiara, too? Missus Princess Daddy™ is life, Simon. You cannot escape it lmao.

Alejandro - Alejandro wakes up to his kids tackle-hugging him in bed. There's breakfast and a card with heartfelt messages on it. They're very proud of their papa for everything he does and continues to do for them. Oh, and he's about to be a papa again. Best Father's Day gift ever, amirite? Congrats, Alejo!

Rudy - Oh, you let the mother hen rest today. Rudy loves to pamper and cater to his family but now it's his turn to be pampered and catered to. The house? Clean. Dinner? Cooking. Kids? Loving on Rudy. All is as it should be.

König - The kiddo's Father's Day gift has been pranking König something fierce all day and all you can do is shake your head in faux exasperation and revel in the gremlin laughter (from both of them) echoing throughout the house. You'll have his favorite meal for dinner.

Horangi - Today, Horangi is being honored by his kid beating him in card games. Repeatedly. And Horangi trying to figure out how and why this is happening lmao.

Graves - Graves is also pretty content with his lot in life. You and Boss Baby Graves give him a gift card to a spa he's been wanting to try. And then you get his ass by having some of the men from Shadow Company call and wish him a Happy Father's Day and call him Dad. Real cute, darlin'.

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dio-niisio · 6 months

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(English is not my first language, so please ignore any mistakes! :-))

Ok I've been imagining a scenario that for some reason Martha and Thomas Wayne are brought back from the dead...

One day they are dead and the other they are starting at their graves, reading their names and being very confused.

Alfred probably finds them first, he looks out the window and sees two people standing in the family cemetery, Wayne Manor had problems in the past with grave robbers, and he would be damned if he let that happen with their grave. So poor Alfred runs, grabbing some old shovel on the way (just to scare, not to harm!), ready to give an ear full on these people. That's when he sees. His friends.

He's surprised to say the least. They don't look young, the years they were gone caught up to them. Thomas has mostly grey hair and Martha had a white strip of hair right in the top of her head...

Alfred doesn't know what to do, so he brings them inside. And starts to prepare some tea while he tries to explain the past 30 something years.

The next person who sees them is Dick, he smelled the tea and was going to get a cup, then he saw the people in the painting on the top of the stairs. And he panicked. Cuz he knows what that implies, and he is worried for his dad.

He introduces himself as 'Bruce's son' which gets them to be a very happy set of grandparents, he tells them the story of when Bruce adopted him (cuz grandpa wanted to meet his mom, in the end he got a nice and tragic story of the flying Grayson's)! And how he always wanted to meet them! He also text Jason, telling him to get his ass downstairs and talk to his family.

Jason almost had a heart attack, he thought that Dick wanted him to talk to Bruce not grandpa and grandma, he's very happy of course, but he's worried for them, resurrection isn't something nice, but they assure him they are as good as they could be. And it is his turn to explain that he's also adopted (they laughed at the tire story, he told them it was one of Bruce's "fancy cars"). He comments that he and Martha have matching hair (both with a white stripe right in the middle).

Tim comes home around noon, he's been spending time with some school friends, and when he hears some commotion in the kitchen he goes to investigate, that's when he sees them and thinks he's hallucinating (again), but he's reassured by a very happy grandma. He tells them he's 'Tim Drake-Wayne', and is his time to explain that no Bruce didn't marry a Drake, he is his legal guardian (aka Dad) cuz when his parents died on a archaeological excavation his uncle was not fit to be his guardian so Bruce stepped up.

Thomas and Martha are so happy in a couple of hours they went from being dead to having 3 beautiful grandchildren! They are very proud of Bruce for making a difference in these boys lives!

That's when Damian walks in the kitchen he just wanted Alfred's help with something, he looks just like Bruce when he was that age (or what they think Bruce would look like), he doesn't look surprised or excited, he just says that he's Bruce's 'biological son', which gets one of his ears pinched by Dick with a very stern 'be nice'. Before they can ask anything they're being hugged by Damian who says that it is nice to have them in here.

When Bruce comes home he's very tired™, he had a day full of meetings on Wayne enterprises and he still gotta do Batman stuff. He passed through the kitchen and saw that his kids had guests over. He doesn't think much of it until he gives a good look at them.

"Mama? Papa?"

And the world stopped spinning. That's them! All he wanted to see since he was an 8 year old little boy. He just doesn't believe it.

He looks just like his dad. Probably a bit shorter (and not rocking the mustache), but he has his mama's eyes. And her smile. He missed her smile so much! He missed his papa's hugs, he missed the lullabies his mama used to sing, he missed playing pretend with his papa, he missed them.

And he can't say a word. He just cries. He hugs them and he cries. His mama and papa are really back! They are back home!

And now it's his turn to catch up! And boy he's got a lot to say!

As they move to the living room Thomas gives this look to Alfred, smiles and says "Thank you for caring for our little boy, old friend!"

"Little boy? I'm sorry Mister Wayne, but that's an understatement. He's almost taller than the cabinets!"

#martha wayne #thomas wayne #bruce wayne #batman #dick greyson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #alfred pennyworth #dc comics

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motherofagony · 10 months

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FIRE WALK - one shot

joel miller x f!reader

pairing: au, no outbreak!joel x f!reader rating: explicit, 18+, minors dni word count: 6.5k summary: a chance encounter at a motel has you crossing paths with a stranger in a blue t-shirt. content warnings + tags: age gap (we'll say 15-20 years), very brief references to past non-con encounters (not with joel, no details just shitty men in general), soft!joel, alcohol, mentions of family trauma and ab*se, unprotected piv, fingering, oral (f + m receiving), A Scene With a Belt™, slight mentions of reader's clothing but no physical descriptions otherwise, love as consumption and women as fruit a/n: this was a brain-worm of a one shot, so i had to press pause on AHFE and get it out. consider it a dirty love letter to strangers with stories in shitty motels. and i have to give the biggest thank-you to @iamskyereads for stepping in and offering to be my beta reader in the final hour. she was so unbelievably thorough and thoughtful and kind. i owe you big.

New-age boogeymen hang two-way mirrors and jiggle motel door handles with broken hangers.

That’s what the news says.

August licks an unforgiving line of heat up your back, and cutoff denim and halter tops do nothing but give the sun more skin to burn.

It’s sweltering, brutal as an Arizona summer is, and The Palms Motel promises a pool and a mini bar on their dirty marquee. You’ll take what you can get, can’t really afford to be picky with fifty dollars in your pocket, but at least maybe you’ll live like royalty tonight.

Some guy you met — Tom, Tim, Jim, whoever — pulls his convertible up to the front office. Your knees knock together over the speed bump, cartilage kissing bone.

It’s the closest you’ve ever come close to a chauffeur, but the chauffeur you see in movies doesn’t usually take liberties with trying to work his grease-speckled mechanic hand up the passenger’s shirt.

You met him at a gas station in Tucson, thumbing your way from northern Texas to put as much distance between you and your whiskey-breathed dad as you could. He’d torn your clothes apart at the seams with his eyes when he spotted you in the parking lot, swimming in blood-infested waters with sharp, sharp teeth.

There was no plan, no directions penned and cities circled on a folded map, just glass in your hair and a final straw.

He asked if you could buy him some booze — revoked license, baby, y’know how that goes — and you shouldn’t have, but when he flashed a leather wallet thick with cash, you knew you’d be stupid not to.

You hid behind a shelf inside the gas station while he idled in the parking lot and plucked a fifty from the wad, stuffing it deep in your bag. You grabbed some shitty malt-something from a fridge along with a 6-pack, flashing the slack-jawed cashier a wink.

He didn’t try to hide the eye contact with your tits, but neither do most men. Sometimes you milk it in your favor, sometimes it just makes your lunch rise to the back of your throat.

And when you’re by yourself, it’s hot iron, ready to strike. A doe in their headlights, a buck with a nice rack. Skipping through the center of their bullseye.

You bought a little palm-sized bottle for yourself and tucked it safely next to the stolen cash in the abyss of your purse. These tiny cons got you by, made power surge deep in your belly. It made loneliness feel worth it, knowing you had an upper hand to lean on if you were ever in a bind.

He bitched about inflation when you came out with less than was reasonable for the amount you spent, and you just shrugged. Not your cash, not your problem.

You bartered for a ride to the nearest motel, and now Tom-Tim-Jim is asking you over the purr of the engine if you need company for the night.

If you were feeling a little more you, you might’ve taken him up on it. Maybe he would’ve even paid for the room, maybe he wouldn’t get angry like your dad does. Maybe he’d be able to fuck you without hitting you.

You’re good at diffusing the temper in most men, can touch them in ways that make them grit their teeth, can be a good girl and go fetch.

But you’re not in the mood to bend, to give someone’s son — someone’s husband with a tan line around their ring finger — a place to wipe their shoes on. You don’t feel like wiping their dirt, your mascara from your eyes and saying thank you while they zip up their pants.

And you sure as fuck don’t fancy being on a milk carton.

“I’m alright, sugar. Thanks for the ride,” you say, dipping your chin to peer over your sunglasses. “I know where to find you, don’t worry.”

Yeah fuckin’ right.

He doesn’t try to conceal his disappointment, just sucks his teeth and squeezes at the exposed skin of your thigh. His way of saying goodbye to something he could’ve dripped sweat on, came in too early. You think your flesh might rot off in chunks.

You open the door and swing your legs out in a way that’s a little too eager.

Tom-Tim-Jim waves solemnly with two fingers up and two bent, and then he’s gone in an aggressive rev.

The motel might’ve been a kitschy dream in its heyday. It’s not a total dump; more of a vintage skeleton of washed-out pink and umbrellas that’ve been ripped by weather and overuse. There are a million faded emblems of cartoonish palm trees. It’s almost endearing how tragic it is.

You can tell that it was popular and swarming with tourists at one time — there are dusty, water-stained pamphlets lining the wall next to the front desk that brag Named one of Arizona’s top destinations in 1996!

A mounted fan whirs and oscillates, but it might as well be someone blowing hot breath down your neck.

There’s a tired woman holding down the fort at the desk with a name tag that claims Brenda, and she looks surprised to see you. You figure most customers are stopping in for a night’s rest on the way to somewhere more important, their final destination. But you don’t look like you have anywhere better to be.

“Hey, honey,” Brenda trickles, laced with an accent that’s more New Orleans than Arizona. “Need a room?”

“Yeah, just for the night,” you say, fishing out your wallet with confidence that doesn’t meet your eyes. “How much?”

“Forty-five a night, ‘less you wanna upgrade to the honeymoon suite.” She looks somewhere over your shoulder.

That’s nearly everything you have, but it sounds a lot like tomorrow’s problem. At least you’ll be safe tonight from the prowling stares of nighttime predators, and the leftover change will give you a decent vending machine dinner.

“Just a normal room’s fine,” you smile, sliding over the crumpled, stolen fifty.

Brenda types busily on the keyboard, asking for your name but nothing else. And when she hands you a plastic keycard, you finally relax your shoulders. Untangle the nerves in your lower back that are choking one another.

Room 17, it reads. Your oasis awaits!

You thank her, spin on your heel, and immediately bump chest to chest with something hard.

You’re eye level with a worn, cornflower blue t-shirt, ringed with a light stain of sweat at the collar. They’re grasping both of your arms to steady you, and you’re snagging the gaze of a tousled man with a bag slung over his shoulder.

“Watch where you’re goin’,” he murmurs, but it isn’t reprimanding or mean like you’re used to, just sickly sweet and Texan. Syrupy in a way that drips right down between your legs.

You don’t remember seeing anyone else in the lot when you’d pulled up. And the stealth of him entering soundlessly behind you sends a jolt of electricity up your spine, the clench of something that would be fear if it were any other stranger.

But he doesn’t look at you with intent to devour or to claim. Just eyes you like you’re anyone else. An equal. The bare minimum, but rare and shiny nonetheless.

“Sorry,” you breathe, and he’s releasing you a little too quickly for your liking. Leaving brands on the creases of where your forearms meet upper and elbow.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

So you don’t.

You brush past him on the way out, a polite nod. And that’s that.

The heat is the kind that feels hotter, unbearable when paired with the shrill sing of cicadas. An endless buzzing that you think might be the sun sizzling on the concrete. If you stood in one place for too long, your flip flops might very well melt you in place.

Your room key clicks to unlock Room 17, and you push the door open to a heavy, humid space that smells vaguely of mold. You’re so grateful for the privacy that you can’t even bring yourself to wrinkle your nose.

Flip flops discarded, your toes sink into shag carpet — a dirty luxury that makes you moan. It’s only been two days since you left home, fled home, but it beats sleeping with one eye open on a bus stop bench.

You up-end your leather bag, dumping all of its contents onto the bed. Cigarettes, some loose film canisters, your toothbrush, a lighter. There wasn’t much time to pack, nothing worth bringing, and the less, the better. Nothing to weigh you down if you had to dip at a moment’s notice.

It takes you only a couple minutes and a light sheen of sweat to realize that the A/C is busted. Smothered, you try to crack open a window in the bathroom, but it’s no cooler than the hell you’re standing in.

When you let Brenda know, she just shrugs with an apologetic kind of half-smile.

“Most of ‘em are out these days, honey,” she says, and you decide then that it’s a small price to pay. “We got someone comin’ to look at it next week.”

You shoot her a smile, figure that she’s had enough rotten backtalk in her day. You scoop a set of flamingo-themed matches from the bowl on the counter and turn around, only to see a familiar blue shirt waiting his turn.

His eyes try not to roam, but he’s giving you a nod and stepping up without hesitation, asking Brenda for extra towels.

The way that she titters and blushes, you’d think he’d asked if he could spit in her mouth.

It irritates you, and you can’t say why.

The door chimes behind you as it closes, and you linger, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. When he emerges, a stack of towels so high it’s hitting his chin, you step in stride on the walk back. Tracing his footsteps, catching up with his shadow.

“You followin’ me?” you quip, a cigarette dangling from your mouth. The cherry ignites on every breath, smoke erupting in tendrils that hug each word.

He answers with a laugh, turns and squints back at you with one eye. Almost as if he was expecting you to ask.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, sweetheart? Could say the same to you.”

You stop in front of 17, hand over your brow to shield from the sun that’s winding its way down, getting ready to tuck itself in for the night. There’s nothing that touches your tongue that doesn’t sound exactly like a fuck yes. So you don’t say anything.

“Enjoy your sauna,” he chuckles over his shoulder, passing you with his towels on the way to Room 20.

—

Led Zeppelin filters out through the radio, half-static, half-electric. Your legs are crossed in the air behind you, and you’re posted up face down on the bed, kicking along to the beat while you flip through whatever Cosmopolitan someone left behind in a drawer.

Someone raps a few times on the door, and if it’s a repairman, they’re getting their fucking dick sucked.

You army-roll off the flowery duvet, abandoning a how-to on finding your g-spot, and you peer through the peephole.

Your breath hitches on a soft swear.

When you open the door, you see Blue T-Shirt standing there, skin creasing around his eyes slyly. An unopened beer hangs and swings from his restless fingers. He offers it up wordlessly, the butt of it pointed at you.

It’s ice-cold and slippery to the touch, erupting goosebumps on your forearm. Saliva coats your tongue, and you don’t think it’s the thirst for alcohol, but maybe the tall drink of water.

“Um… thanks?”

“Figured you’d either be dead by now or parched,” he says smugly, and it’s velvet to your ears.

“Oh. Yeah, thanks. I got the fan to work at least,” you mutter, jerking your thumb vaguely behind you.

“Listen, uh —”

He’s rubbing the nape of his neck, and you catch the way the network of muscles flex from his elbow to the seam of his armpit. He looks like he’s in pain, struggling with the fit of a puzzle piece into something rough and jagged.

Something he shouldn’t be trying but has to see it through, exhaust it until it’s definite one way or the other.

You just squint, sucking in the corner of your lip between your teeth. You nearly grin, but it’s much more fun to watch than to connect the dots for him.

“A/C works in my room, so ‘f you wanted to… y’know,” he trails off, not even sure in his own offer. “No pressure. It’s hot as hell outside, don’t want you t’get heat stroke ‘f I can help it.”

This kind of approval you like. This kind that sizzles girl-honey between your legs, winning it from a man that’s playing to earn, not to cheat.

“I try not to make a habit out of going into motel rooms of guys I don’t know the names of,” you harp sweetly. But it might as well be a done-deal.

“D’you make a habit outta accepting beers from ‘em?”

You smile. Typically, yes.

“Joel.”

His hand shoots out, strong and suggestive. Fingers like alligator teeth that’ll grip you, hold you under until you thrash.

And you pluck your cigarettes and gifted liquor bottle from the bed, arms full when you carry them down to Joel’s room.

—

You’re sprawled on the full-size bed next to his, head propped up on hand propped up on elbow.

You’ve been trading your little fist of bourbon back and forth, swapping stories in the same way. Somehow, you fall into it easy like old friends, and it’s nice to follow someone’s lead instead of keeping one step, three, seven steps ahead. Arm outstretched to the door knob, feet ready to break into a run at the change in tone, blackening of pupils.

Without meaning to, you’ve wordlessly agreed that the person in possession of the bottle has the proverbial mic, and they swig to help with details and theatrics. It’s counter-productive in flow, but it makes you laugh when Joel exaggerates the story he’s telling on purpose, reaching out to pass it back and suddenly yanking it back, remembering a shade of gray or a funny expression.

Your knuckles keep zapping each other, brushing a little longer than the time before. There’s no numbness to consensual touch.

Joel’s mid-40s. From Texas, like you. He came to visit his daughter Sarah at college, says she’s growin’ up too fast, doesn’t need her old man anymore. It’s a thrill to see someone talk about their own flesh with love, admiration for who she is and who she’s becoming. You find yourself leaning in, enraptured that there are no IOUs or fine-print that you know to come with a parent’s love.

Mentions of his stubborn brother Tommy who he works with and who just can’t stop getting into trouble. The unspoken guilt that maybe he could be the one to keep him out of jail if he tried harder. It doesn’t work that way, and you tell him so.

You tell him about your dad when he asks about your life, your story, and you don’t know why you do but maybe you know exactly why. No one ever gets close enough to ask, so it comes leaking out of the corners of your mouth.

You’ve never told anyone, not even your diary, not even the guidance counselor who slipped a note to your fifth grade teacher and pulled you out of class. Shaky fingers, shaky limbs when they asked if they could roll up your sleeves just to see and you said no.

Crying because you knew your dad wouldn’t let you go back. Not to school, not to your friends.

You omit the nitty-gritty details, but Joel gets the gist. Swigs his share of the liquor a little too angrily with tight lips. Not like your dad does, but you don’t miss the irony of it all.

He holds anger for you, on behalf of you. It simmers as he listens to you in patient silence, coming to a boil at the bad parts when he gets up and starts walking lines in the shitty carpet. Pretending to look outside in interest at his truck parked at the end of the lot, but gripping the curtains until you can see every expanse of bone in his hand.

You don’t need this from him. It’s a hurt you’ve wedged between the pages of a book and doused in flames of acceptance long ago. But it spreads from your toes to your ears, the burn of someone feeling like this. For someone like you.

He finally settles down in an armchair by the window, a funny corduroy thing that would probably light up under a blacklight on one of those crime shows. Legs parted, a warm stare on the way you take up space on the bed. Facing him comfortably, your vision buzzing around the edges. A loose smile shared as if this room was meant for the two of you all along.

“So, what’s your plan?” Joel’s humming, his words getting lost in an echo of the bottle neck.

You don’t have one. Can’t have one when you have nowhere to go but gone.

It stretches on and on between you — a mouth opened and closed too many times on possibilities. If you admit to it, you end up with pity or an upper hand dealt to a stranger. You can’t afford to owe anyone a favor, nor can you front the cost of needing one.

But you’re so tired.

“Dunno. I’ll figure it out.”

“You got enough time for that?”

And you know what he means. Enough time in the motel, enough time before you’re a thief at wit’s end, doing anything for survival. He doesn’t need to ask to know you don’t have a destination, some relative waiting for you in a California dream.

You’ve excused yourself to the bathroom, soft radio bleeding in under the door, arms braced on the sink, all glossy eyes.

You want him, bad. But he won’t make the first move, won’t take advantage of what isn’t his and what others before him took without asking. You’re a pawn, entitled to the first move. The rejection would kill you, but not knowing would be worse.

He could hold you soft, give you something to think about when tomorrow rips you both in opposite directions.

When you pull open the door, Joel’s frozen in mid-stride towards you, like he’s just made up his mind about something.

He straightens but he’s still. Afraid of moving too fast, saying too much, scaring you into flight. Out of the unlocked cage of his room — something he did on purpose, because he doesn’t expect anything from you and wants you to know he doesn’t.

You meet him in his dusty shag quicksand. You take his wrist in your hand, kiss the thrum of life in the dip where veins meet palm. An offering.

Joel looks like he’s in pain, like what you’re doing is excruciating and thorny. The front of his jeans strains. He’s searching you for any hesitation, any obligation because he did something kind. He knows what currency you feel the need to pay in, and this isn’t that.

“Please,” you whisper simply. And he nods, accepting, succumbing.

There’s a careful meeting of lips, wanting to do it the right way, in the right order. When you push your tongue in, used to the pace of animals, he just holds your face and slows you down. It’s languid, his mouth showing you what sweet and gentle can taste like. Your tongues take their time, and your hands slip beneath the hem of his shirt, all ribbed muscle with a sprinkling of hair.

He shudders against the lightness of your feather-fingers.

Joel’s hands are peeling your shirt off, his thumbs resting to press against pillowy hips. He’s not letting your lips go, something like impatience stirring in you.

Doesn’t he want to fuck you hard? Fuck you fast and selfish?

Isn’t there a catch?

He’s taking his shirt off now, up and over. Carved by Michaelangelo, thrown up on a ceiling in a library book you read once. You’re touching him in reverence, but not letting yourself learn too much of him.

His eyes are molten. Joel walks you back to the edge of the bed, scratchy quilt tickling your thighs when you fall back on it. You start to pose yourself, angles that make you look more desirable, pliable. But he’s not paying attention to that, just unbuttoning your shorts, kissing the jut of every curve and permeating down to the bone, punching out a soft groan when he slides the denim off and sees the shining ambrosia that’s waiting.

He’s kneeling, tugging you down to meet his waiting mouth. And you’re just breathless, flinching when he pulls you apart, guiding your legs over his shoulders and wasting no time devouring you. Your legs, his bib.

Joel’s tongue flicks through the shell of you, teasing you in alternates of quick and slow, starving and full. It feels like a slice of heaven.

You pitch out a tangled gasp, hands instinctively moving to knot in his hair. Anything to hold onto, a different kind of grounding.

“So wet f’me,” he vibrates lowly into you, all husk. “Taste so fuckin’ sweet.”

He sinks a middle finger into you, and you’re keening, hips canting and unable to stay glued to the mattress. You feel him smile against your cunt, just pressing his forearm across your lower half to keep you still.

Joel’s twisting and working into you, onto you, and you’re so fucking close from just this — a tiptoeing to the edge that grows longer, more erratic in stride. He sucks your clit — pulsing sensitive, so swollen — into his mouth and grazes it with the tip of his tongue just so. Baring his incisors and closing around you in a delicious scrape like a Venus flytrap taking its meal.

You think you see God behind the flutter of your eyes.

You’re close enough to warn him, to rasp it out in the symphony of moans. His free hand reaches up to roll your peaked nipple between his forefinger and thumb, and he stretches you with an added ring finger. You’re writhing. Possessed.

He’s watching you through thick lashes. Letting your heels dig into his shoulders as the drenched sounds of you fill the room.

“Joel, please — I’m gonna —”

“C’mon, pretty girl,” he just murmurs.

You feel that little pull at your navel.

And you’re tipping in a freefall, seeing stars. You clench down around his fingers, fingers that are still pumping against that spongy spot deep inside you. Your arousal gushes, wet and sticky against the scrape of his beard. He laps you up, the sight making heat creep up your chest and wrap around your neck.

When he lifts his head, he’s high on it. Pupils dilated like tiny, round moons. Your orgasm glistens on him, smeared over lips and chin. The fur of a peach peeled back far enough to sink teeth into.

It’s fucking filthy.

Joel places open-mouthed kisses from your hip up to the center of your breasts, a trail of your orgasm shiny on your skin in perfect, sloppy Os. His breath meets your throat where he nips at you, and you don’t have time to drag in a breath before you’re tasting the saltiness of yourself on his tongue.

Your fingers fumble on his belt, practiced with years of releasing the tension on the metal prongs, the slithering sound whooshing from the loops of pants. You’re good at it, like you used to be good at gymnastics until your mom stopped getting out of bed to drive you.

There was always a little gold for contorting your body.

He detaches from you unwillingly, putting all of his weight on his knees and shins as he straddles the space of your thighs.

You’re pulling yourself up in a sitting position, pushing denim and boxers down past his hips. Letting his cock spring free, the head a dark pink and beaded with precum. You swipe the flat of your tongue against it, peeking up at him while you soak up the taste of it.

When you push the length of him into your mouth, ridged hard with veins, Joel tips his head back, chin to the ceiling. He groans something brutish yet helpless, cradling the back of your head. You’re seated in the driver’s seat, all control.

It’s new, different.

But then he’s moving his hips back, pulling himself from your mouth, wiping the saliva from your chin with a steady thumb.

“Don’t need t’do that,” Joel whispers hoarsely. “Not ‘f you don’t want to.”

Confused, you knit your brows. He laughs darkly, shaking his head.

“Didn’t mean it like that, it’s — it feels fuckin’ good,” he says, awestruck. “Would just rather make you feel good instead.”

Oh.

He doesn’t wait for an answer or a negotiation. The rest of his clothes pool on the floor in a pile, and he’s climbing back over you, an anchor or a buoy in a storm.

He lines himself up at the seam of you, puffy and so wet from before, nudging the tip of his cock at your warm center. A thumb coaxing the bud at the apex of you in lazy circles.

Joel’s sliding in slowly by each inch, filling you full until there’s nothing left and his patch of hair prickles the pearl of your clit. All you can do is whine and tense around him.

He’s resting tentative hands on either side of your face, indenting the weak mattress with handprints. He groans, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t give in when you try to rock against him.

“This alright?”

You’ve forgotten how to do anything, hoping that digging your fingertips into his forearms is communication enough.

“I’m gonna need a yes, baby.”

You feel around in the dark for the tether back to your body, and it jerks you like a marionette, giving him a nod.

“Yes. Fuck.”

That’s enough. He’s rewarding you with a roll of his hips, and you feel like you’re on fire. It’s a stuttering, painfully slow pace at first, his mouth so close to your ear that every grunt is amplified. But it evolves into something eager, unsatiated, snapping up into you with a relentless sort of fucking.

He’s hitting that place so deep within you, letting you unravel and grow hoarse from the moans tearing their way up your throat. That pressure is roiling, the kind that you get only when you touch yourself but intensified by a million.

It just feels so right, because there’s nothing to prove.

You’re ships passing in the night, strangers making a pit-stop on the way to nowhere. There’s no backstory, no history to make mention of. No shame in the morning when he inevitably rolls over and pretends to be asleep, and you scrub off the smell of him with your provided travel-size shampoo.

It’s not love, but it might be the closest you ever get.

The glow of him above you, a deity with his face screwed in agony. Chasing after you when he feels the tightening of your cunt, the easy glide of every thrust that tells him you’re close.

Then, you’re snapping like a rubber band. Gushing in a dripping mess that trickles to where your ass meets thigh. Crying without tears, overstimulated but blissful. Joel is quick to follow, like he’s been waiting his turn.

He’s trembling, emptying inside you in a warm flood. Groaning low and beautiful, gripping your hips to keep you flush to him.

When pulls out, tearing himself away, he’s slinging an arm over his eyes on the pillow beside yours. One hand on your leg to make sure you don’t go anywhere.

“So fuckin’ perfect,” you hear him mutter.

At some point you drift off, his arm draped over you. You open a bleary eye to a neon 2:49AM that casts a halo over the nightstand. Joel’s tucked you in, the thin duvet snug up to your shoulder. He’s not snoring but not not snoring, just breath getting caught in his throat in a satisfied, well-spent way.

It’s all too much, too pure to be real.

Before you let yourself change your mind, you slink out from under the warmth of your generous stranger. You step in your shorts one foot at a time, tugging them up gelatin legs too springy from coiling and uncoiling.

You promise yourself that you’ll take just one mental picture as a keepsake, and it’s this. A sleepy Joel who will be well on his way to a second cup of coffee on the way out of Arizona, maybe even nursing a little headache behind his right eye. And he’ll remember an apparition of some girl he fucked in a motel. The touristy thing to do, a sight to see.

He might even tell Tommy, say you were a crazy little thing with too much baggage, but it was fun to stay up past his bedtime.

You don’t mean to do it, really you don’t, but you flip through his wallet that lays innocently on top of the TV.

If you take a little something, that’ll turn this into another one of your stories that you tell your kids born from a loveless marriage somewhere in the crevices of a future from now. It won’t pull on the tendons of your heart.

And it won’t mean anything. You won’t let it.

—

The next morning, there’s a soft knock at the door, and it’s probably housekeeping kicking you out for overstaying your welcome. Time to turn down the bed for the next lost soul. You imagine Joel’s long gone, hopped in his truck and back to a reality you’ll never meet him in.

Your fingers are slow to gather up your purse, and you’re shoving your toothbrush in from its place on the sink.

“I’ll be out in a second!” you yell in a voice that reeks of years of diner-flavored customer service.

More persistent knocking that borders on pounding. It shakes the chain in the deadbolt.

You’re yanking open the door, and there’s Joel, white shirt and jeans. And it isn’t that cushion of admiration from last night, no greeting with a chaste kiss on the cheek.

Just a wolf coming to claim his continental breakfast.

Fuck.

You try to shut the door, suddenly too ashamed of what you’ve done, and to someone undeserving. Someone that showed you kindness, empathy.

But his boot catches the door before it can close, and he’s inside, slicing through the space between you. It’s not quite anger, but it’s shadowy. Sardonic.

Your shoulder blades kiss the cheap wallpaper.

“You’re real funny, y’know that?” he starts, and he’s smiling but not really.

Shrinking small, so small that maybe you’ll disappear.

There’s a tick of silence. His thumb skates to your collarbone and then to the hollow at the base of your throat. He wants to squeeze but he doesn’t, his fingers wrapping loosely around the column to fix you there. Heat creeps up the back of your neck into your hairline.

The instinct to flinch bubbles up against your joints, but you can’t bring yourself to.

“Y’think you can fuck me,” he muses, disgustingly deadpan, “‘n steal from me.”

Dread weighs heavy like lead in your stomach. You can’t stop yourself from shaking your head, still playing dumb.

He bristles at that, thunderous. You both know it’s a lie; you’re a hundred dollars richer than you were last night. His fingers briefly flex around you in a way that you’ve seen before, and horror hits a fever pitch in you.

Tears prick your eyes, and you’re putting your palms on his chest and shoving, but he doesn’t give. Unstoppable force meets immovable object, and all that.

It’s not so much the blaring punctuation in a sentence, the ticking of dynamite ready to blow. He’s confronting you with proximity, with your own dishonesty. Wanting to shake you and tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Joel just leans in closer, almost grazing noses. You try to breathe around the lump of panic.

“The hell’s the matter with you?”

It’s disbelief, it’s hurt. In the same way, it’s understanding, incredulous. It’s him stepping back and loosening the hold around your neck like no one’s ever done; it’s softening and imploring.

He’s shoving his hands in his pockets, guilty and recoiling. Sorry he could even make himself look like one of them — a forced penance in the flesh.

There’s no answer that can justify what you did. Nothing simple about nothing personal. But truly… that’s all it was. A pie wafting steam on an open windowsill. Something to make you feel better about the void he’d leave.

“‘F you needed money, you coulda just asked.”

He’s disappointed, desperate. In a tone that really says, I would’ve done anything you wanted.

A dam inside you gives, crumbling deep at the foundation and knocking the walls down around you. Words don’t come, but you shove your hand in blind into your bag, pulling out the loose bill and extending it.

Joel sees the regretful offering and your heart with x-ray vision. That you think of yourself as a doll, less valuable without her box. Used without tags. Free to a good home.

He shakes his head, the softness of a keep it barely peeking out of his mouth.

You’re skinning yourself raw, wanting another way out but having none. With half a mind to say that the next night could come with fangs.

You feel the stab of relief, and shame. So much shame.

Like a soothsayer, he foresees the coldness of a bench, the shrinking of you into the safety of an alley.

You drop to your knees in exaltation, thinking you know what’ll fix this. You can’t see through the watercolor blur of your tears, but you touch his belt with fingers that are cold to the tips.

But Joel knows what you’re doing, shaking his head no no no.

He won’t let you do it like this. He drags you up gently by the elbows. Pulls you into his chest, says stop stop stop. Kisses your hair, then your lips. You cry until he can taste the tears, until the front of his shirt is damp.

“I’m sorry,” you rasp out roughly. “I’m so sorry.”

He tells you to never say sorry to him again.

—

Joel pays for a room for two more nights, but only one — his with the working A/C.

You move your toothbrush and your bag over to Room 20.

You go to the pool, swimming laps around him in a tank top and your cherry-embroidered underwear, squealing and splashing in a flail when he swims underneath your legs and stands up to hold you on his tan shoulders.

Sunscreen streaks greasy on your stomach when you lay out together on the loungers after. Joel likes a cat-nap with his face under a towel, grumpy and tired from the sun. But he never snaps at you, never gets impatient when you ask too many questions while he’s dozing off.

You learn the pinched expression he makes just before he comes. That his right palm has hundreds of lines you can see best by lamplight. He misses the noise of Sarah in his house, of sharing the coffee pot with someone. He doesn’t like the small piling of toast crumbs left only by him on the kitchen table.

He learns that you apologize for wet, clean hair on his pillowcase, for laughing too loud. Things that don’t need a sorry. A collection of oversaturated manners that might take time to unlearn, but he promises to teach you.

He learns that you approach an orgasm with tentative toes in cold water, almost unbelieving that sex can give, give, give instead of take, take, take. He learns that you like the meeting of eyes when he’s buried between your legs, pushing your thighs apart to keep from suffocating. That when he does let you get on your knees for him, you know just the spot to caress with your tongue on the underside of his cock.

Joel’s belt is snaked under your stomach, across your hips, fists intertwined in the leather as he pulls you back, slams himself forward. It bites and creates indents in your flesh, and you don’t care. He gives you marks to love, to admire in your reflection, never ones that are ugly. Never ones out of hate over spilled milk.

There’s a dirty slap of skin, growing louder, competing with your moans. Your nails are tearing into the cheap sheets, and Joel’s so close but won’t come until he coaxes another out of you. A grand total of at least four by now, but you’ve lost count.

At long last, you splinter around him. Pitching off the cliff in a cry. Joel’s leaning — his chest, your back — and spilling deep, holding onto you for dear life. You hear him whimper in a strangle. Big, tough game that’s been taken down with an arrow in his chest.

Hot tears are flowing out of you, stuttering sobs close to follow, and Joel pulls out slowly. Seems to know why. And he rolls you over, into him, hand careful in slow strokes against your hair.

You’ve never been good at goodbyes. Maybe that’s what this is.

Men like to say that women like you are insane, too analytical, too tear-streaked, too conscious of the way they look when they sleep. Because waking up with your mouth open, a drying corner of drool threatening your cheek is too human, not pretty.

Sometimes women like you are dead, rotting pomegranate flesh. Long forgotten in decay on the ground when the weight became too heavy to hold yourself up. And those men pick up your seeds and shove them squelching back into places where they don’t fit.

The winters come bitter and harsh, but you’re always reborn in the spring. And without fail, you grow back fiercely into a tree reminiscent of Eden, low-hanging apples plucked and bruised and bitten into once and spit out in tart disgust.

Women like you choke men like this with your pits, strangle them with vines, poison them with berries. They can consume, but so can you.

But then, in the ripe, cool shade of summer, you’ll have a visitor like Joel that will come with a basket and a blanket and they’ll stay and read books beneath you. They’ll enjoy your fruit, you’ll drip from their mouth and dry tacky like flypaper, and they won’t be able to imagine a day before you.

They’ll collect all the pieces of you on a Tuesday morning and give you change to get a Coke after checkout. They’ll tuck you into the front seat of their truck, let you put your feet up on the dash, hand protective and calm on your thigh while the other steers you both back to Texas. A new home without shouting and bottles thrown.

And they’ll stay through every season.

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