Left Drowning

  I wrap my legs around his waist and lift into him. And now he’s the one saying my name over and over. Hearing me come like that has gotten him close. Closer than I want.

  “No,” I tell him. “Don’t you dare come yet. I need you to keep fucking me.”

  I’ve learned that sometimes this is what I want after I come—I want to get fucked long and hard. While I am crazy about the times we have gentle, tender lovemaking, I’m equally aroused by the grittier, dirtier side of sex. Fortunately, so is Chris, and likely even more so than I am.

  Maybe it’s not fair to ask him to wait, especially after what did just did for me. But it is his fault for being so indescribably good and for making me want as much as I do from him.

  “Blythe, I don’t think I can wait.” He’s still grinding into me.

  “Yes, you can.”

  I love this part: the power exchange.

  Sometimes he’s in charge, sometimes I’m in charge. We’ve started to share this power more equally, trading it back and forth, often over and over in one night. And then there are times when there is no power game, when we do everything together, we feel everything together, we come together. I’m going to need that again. Later tonight.

  But for now, I need him to do what I want.

  I push him up hard, and he stops moving.

  “Think about whatever you want. Painting the house. Doing the dishes after Zach made that gnarly batch of chili.” I smile. “I don’t care what you have to do. Think about whatever you have to, but don’t stop fucking me. I need you, Chris.”

  Chris shuts his eyes for a minute. I love watching him focus like this. I can feel the shift in his body, the ability to control himself reappearing. He pulls out farther now and fucks me like I want. Slow and steady and deep. I look down and watch his cock thrust smoothly in and out, slamming into me over and over. I’m even wetter now after coming, and this can’t be making things any easier for him. But somehow he is able to last for me.

  I can still feel the end of my orgasm, how sensitive I am, how I throb each time Chris enters me. I pull him in faster. Rougher. I love when he holds himself up on his hands, angles his body against me. I tuck in my knees. “Harder,” I tell him. “Harder.” He gives me what I want. He’s completely immersed in me now, I can tell. He can keep going.

  I put my hands on his chest. He’s starting to sweat, which turns me on even more. “Yes, Chris.” He fucks me for what feels like forever, but I can’t get enough. I push his chest up higher, and he sits back so that he’s kneeling again, his hands holding my legs.

  We watch how deep his cock goes inside me like this, how hot it looks, how good we look fucking.

  “Blythe.” He can barely talk, but he looks at me. “Fuck, I love your pussy.”

  I smile again. I can toy with him, too. “I know.”

  Over the past month, Chris has empowered me in ways he probably wasn’t planning on. I can be bold and insistent, and, like right now, even a little self-satisfied. He’s learning to let me play with my power, just as I let him. On the flip side, I can be vulnerable and honest with him to a degree I never imagined. In bed and out. I can be everything with him and for him.

  Right now, Chris is on that pleasure edge, and I can’t make him wait any longer. “I’m going to make you come now,” I say. “As hard as you made me come.”

  I slide my legs out from between us, and he drops his weight onto me. I tighten around him and rock my hips hard. I put my hands on his ass and pull him in, over and over, getting him louder and closer. “I want you to come on me. Let me feel it.”

  His body starts to stiffen as he pulls out and gets the condom off fast. He rubs himself over my body until he shakes hard against my stomach, and then I feel him come on my chest as he groans my name. He sounds and feels unbelievable.

  Chris puts his hand over mine and moves it across my stomach to my breasts. I love this. While he catches his breath, he looks between us and watches as I rub the wetness over my nipples. He kisses me now and lowers his body to rest on mine. I want to stay like this—with Chris pressed against me, kissing me, tasting me—until we can fuck again.

  I kiss the sweat from his shoulders and neck. “You were born to fuck me, Christopher Shepherd.”

  He tucks my hair behind my ears and kisses me softly. “I was also born to love you.”

  Later, Chris falls asleep and I watch him breathing peacefully. We have been drowning in each other. In beautiful ways, yes. But I know there are other reasons for this intensity. Chris is escaping, running from his own hell, and I am enabling that because I don’t want to lose him. I can’t.

  But I also know that we can’t stay like this forever. I need to pitch more articles for the magazine where I used to work in Boston. They’re not paying me much for my freelance writing, but I want to stay in their good graces. Chris and I haven’t talked yet about what we might do when summer ends. Estelle, Eric, Zach, and James have to go back to school, and surely Sabin will want to get out of the Bar Harbor area soon, since there’s not a particularly hot theater scene here.

  At some point, I’ll have to get back to Massachusetts. James and I have made the decision to sell our parents’ house near Boston. The truth is that we’ve overspent fixing up the house here on Frenchman Bay, but we both agreed that the investment is worth it. This place now feels more like home to us. I’m not sure if I could live here year-round, but the idea certainly has its appeal. It would be incredibly quiet during the long off-season when the tourist crowds disappear, but I might very well like that.

  But tonight we aren’t going anywhere. So I watch Chris sleep, and I wait for the fear to hit him. I’m scared to get up for a glass of water because I don’t want him to be alone when the dreams crash over him. He sleeps on his stomach, his hands up by his head, his breathing deep and even. For now.

  Every night, there is a point when Chris reaches for me in his sleep. But he doesn’t reach for me just out of affection. He reaches for me for protection and for comfort. Over the past few weeks he’s had nightmares, although he never confirms them for me in the morning. He sleeps through the dreams, even when his body flinches, sometimes thrashes, and he panics and sweats. But he always reaches for me. I whisper to him that he’s safe, that my sweet boy is safe, and I wrap my whole body over him and will him to feel the intensity of my love and my belief in him.

  Why is he having these nightmares so vividly now? I don’t know for sure, but I believe it’s being back in Maine, the place that he never wanted to come back to. Then there’s our proximity to the water. The way Chris looks out at the Atlantic haunts me. I see his deep love for the ocean, but I also see his conflicted feelings and the fragility that he hides so well. The justification he gives for never swimming is that the water is too cold. But I know that’s not the whole story, since physically, Chris could tolerate the cold. It relates to what he told me about having a love/hate relationship with water. It’s the hate part that terrifies me. I have the same thing because of my association between the house fire and the ocean, but I have been using the ocean to help me heal.

  Here’s the other thing about his nightmares: I think they are unleashed by being with me. I know it. Our connection elicits the past and the truth from each of us. He thinks that’s crazy, but I don’t. It defies my lack of belief in God and fate, but I know this to be an absolute and unexplainable truth.

  I admire Chris for how his strength never falters, but I also look for the times when he is vulnerable because I like taking care of him. So far these moments have come when he is asleep or during certain moments when we are making love. Otherwise, he tries to shield me from what he sees as weaknesses, the things he thinks I don’t want to see. What he doesn’t understand is that seeing him with his guard down is what I am ultimately after, however afraid of it I am. It will show me that he has let me into his heart in a consequential, profound way, and it means that we have a chance at longevity. Of course, as much as I want his walls to come down, I don’t know
what it will look like when they crash.

  But I can feel it coming. Chris hasn’t said anything to me yet, but I know without a doubt that we won’t be able to hide from what is tormenting him. I haven’t wanted to think too much about what exactly his childhood was made of—what it was like for Sabin, Estelle, and Eric, too—and his insistence on looking solely at the present and the future has distracted me from looking at his past. But as much respect as I have for his privacy, it’s getting harder for me to ignore that he will not be able to run from his own memories forever. I can recognize trauma in another person because I have experienced my own, and to see it in Chris is slowly torturing me.

  I feel it brewing furiously beneath the surface of our love: the looming promise of an inevitable, destructive storm.

  I hope he will reach for me then.

  I am going to fight with everything that I am to save him and to save us, but I won’t be able to do it alone.

  The room is dark, and I hear a light rain start outside. I lie on my side and press my body against him with some faint hope that I can shield him from the haunting internal terror. My arm gravitates to his back, and I rest my scar between his two, forming the solid line. I want more than anything for the power of us together to be stronger than the power of the damage.

  If I still believed in God, in anything, I would be praying.

  JULY

  TWENTY-FIRST

  Chris takes the hit to the back of his head with as little defiance as a teenage boy can. Defending himself, talking back, usually doesn’t go over well. Not that anything goes over well when his father is like this, but shielding his body or mouthing off can easily lead his father to turn on one of the younger kids instead. It has been three days since the latest episode began, and if history repeats itself, this should be the last day. It hasn’t been this bad in a long time.

  Months sometimes go by with nothing. A quiet house, a semblance of normalcy—albeit a cold, intimidating household—and then, as if out of nowhere, it starts. Sometimes a clear bad mood triggers it, sometimes his father’s manic elation over whatever art piece he is working on ends in an abrupt downward spiral. The unpredictability is the worst part. Not knowing when it’s coming, when the rage and need for control will start, is perhaps worse than when the fire finally ignites. The waiting, the fear that an explosion can happen at any time, that’s what is most terrifying.

  Well, maybe not the most terrifying. But there is a certain ironic release of tension when his father finally lashes out, because at least then the anticipation is over and there is something clear to deal with. To endure.

  All Chris has to do is get through the day. Unfortunately, it is only late morning, so he has a number of hours ahead of him. As long as he keeps his brothers and sister from witnessing whatever happens, he’ll consider today a victory. That’s one of the things that he occupies his mind with during these times, strategizing how to keep them from getting hurt and from seeing as little as possible. And he thinks about the future and how this present hell is not forever.

  It’s just pain.

  All he has to do is breathe through it.

  Chris is going to get them all out. He and his brothers and sister are unfairly alone in this, so Chris will protect them until they all leave for college. No one would believe them about what goes on in this house because his father is so fucking idolized around here. The hugely successful artist who bravely soldiered on after his wife’s death and raised four children on his own? The man who is routinely hailed for his dedication to his volunteer work? Who makes large donations to his church? He couldn’t possibly be such a fucking crazy asshole.

  A number of years ago when he was in middle school, Chris made an attempt to get help after one particularly awful night. The night that his father seated them all at the dining room table and demanded that Chris lay his hand flat on the table. His father spent the next hour alternately holding a heavy rubber mallet two feet above Chris’s hand and then pacing the room, laughing and talking about building strength of character, teaching them to feel no fear. He talked about the respect that he deserved after all of his success. Chris only heard pieces of it, never really made sense of the words, because the sound of fear that ran through his own head masked whatever crazy stuff his father was preaching. Chris tried hard not to flinch when his father pretended that he was going to slam the mallet down on his hand. He didn’t want to scare Estelle, Eric, and Sabin more than they already were. He wanted to be strong for them, and he tried to reason that his father often enjoyed delivering hours of terrifying threats that usually didn’t pan out. For him, instilling fear was sometimes enough.

  Still, Chris’s determination to hold still faltered. He couldn’t help it. After one of the fake swings when his father landed the mallet two inches from his hand and Chris automatically pulled away, Estelle and Eric both screamed and ran from the table. They were caught on the second floor of the house, where their father spent twenty minutes tying the twins to the banister rungs where they had an eagle-eye view of the table. Chris can still see the wire being formed into intricate twists and knots, like samples of their father’s sculpture, but perversely showcased around their wrists and their necks. Leaving was not an option and shutting their eyes was not allowed. Sabin and Chris never broke eye contact while Sabin’s hands were bound behind him, securing him to his chair. Sabin’s expression was worse than the twins’ tears, Chris thought. The look of heartbreaking sympathy for how much more Chris endured cut the deepest. Sabin didn’t get half of what Chris did, mostly because Chris needed him to keep the twins away from harm, and it was usually easy enough to get his father to direct all of his attention to Chris. He was the oldest; he could take it better. Keeping their father away from Eric and Estelle was often doable. Chris just had to bait him by saying something along the lines of, “You’re going to work the little kids over? What? You can’t deal with me? I’m the one you want.” He couldn’t always protect Sabin, but he tried because Sabe was more fragile than he was.

  So that night wore on.

  The threat of the mallet continued until Chris finally yelled, “Just do it!” knowing what this would earn him, but also knowing that his shout would end this episode. It would be the grand finale. It was the type of climax their father fed off, and delivering it would at least make the torture stop. “Do it!” Chris screamed again.

  And his father did, pounding the mallet onto Chris’s hand, then tossing it aside and retreating to his expansive studio on the opposite side of the house. The pain was shocking, but as soon as his father was gone, Chris got up from the table. It took a while to find something to cut the wire and free the others, and he assured them repeatedly that he was okay. Yes, his knuckle was probably broken, but he would be fine. Sabin wrapped up his hand tightly with a bandage and homemade splint and got him two bags of ice to try to cut through the pain and swelling.

  The next Sunday, Chris took Estelle to church as he always did. They got there early so Chris could talk to the priest. He showed the man his hand, tried to explain. It backfired. At that day’s sermon, the priest lectured the congregation on lying and sinning in general, and made a point to say that lying—especially about one’s father—was most certainly a sin. Chris understood what the priest was saying: After everything their father had done to support the church financially, this was how his children were repaying him? With lies because they were ungrateful troublemakers? Chris realized that nobody was going to save them. There were rarely physical marks to show, anyway, this broken hand being one of the exceptions. In this small town, there were few ways, if any, to combat their father’s public image.

  After the church episode, Chris and Sabin talked it over and agreed: they shouldn’t try for help. Besides, even if help came, it would mean they would be split up. Who would take four children? And older children at that? No one. That’s who.

  And they refused to be separated. That would be worse than this life. Together they could stand, divided they wou
ld fall.

  Now that Chris is well past middle school, and fully grown, he has more self-control than he did during that episode with the mallet years ago. That self-control is what allows him to absorb his father’s blow without comment when a second hard hit lands on the side of his head. It’s not as blinding as the first. The repeated direct physical hits are unusual. And scary. Chris recovers quickly and continues moving the concrete and stone blocks from one side of the studio to the other. The underside of his hands is red and raw, and his legs and back hurt, but he is going to be fine. The lashes on the back of his legs sting something awful, but that’s what happens when you stumble, crack the corner of a stone block that could have been used as part of a multimedia art piece, and then get lashed with a piece of plastic cord. Who knew plastic could hurt so fucking much? It’s like that rubber mallet. It was just rubber, right? But his middle knuckle still shows the effects.

  Chris drank a ton of water and ate well last night and this morning because he knew he would need to stay hydrated and need as much energy as he could find. He is seventeen years old, going into his senior year of high school, and he is strong, he reasons to himself. Mentally and physically. He can let this crazy bastard do what he needs to because there is no other choice. So when his father announced after breakfast that “it’s time to get to work,” Chris felt as prepared as he could be.

  Rote, exhaustive, pointless tasks are his father’s preferred method of torture. Long hours prove a capacity for physical endurance, or so he says. The lashes and getting knocked around are not typical, though. This could be a very bad day, Chris knows, but he finds comfort in his belief that the others will not be touched. His father’s attention will be only on him today; he can feel that.

  So far it’s been three hours, hardly a record. Eventually, this will end.