PART ONE

After a few moments, Christa found where I’d thrown her shorts and underwear, and used the shorts to wipe up the residue of semen left on her breasts, pausing for a moment to tease one of her nipples to stiffness. Then she stood up, crossed back over to my desk, slid open the center drawer, dropped the panties in, and slid it closed again.

I got off the floor and sat on the end of the sofa, thinking that if I were a cigarette smoker, this would be the correct moment. Then I remembered the pre-rolled joint I had been saving for when I finished my paper. I knew my work was over for the time being, but the joint seemed like a good idea, so I fished it out of my bookbag, lit it, and took a healthy drag.

“Ooh, a bad boy,” Christa said, plopping herself down next to me and snatching the cannabis cigarette. She took two medium tokes, handed it back, and then reclined, her head nestling in my lap – right next to my stunned and recovering penis – and crossed her legs lanquidly.

“This is really nice,” she said with a sigh, and I laughed. “I thought it would be great, and really, really hot, and it definitely was. Your cock is incredible, and you fucked me just right.

“I just didn’t expect it to feel this nice.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, because I am fucked,” I replied, taking another long pull. 

Christa shifted slightly to look at my face.

“You don’t regret it, do you?”

I didn’t, but I knew I might someday. And I certainly wasn’t proud of myself.

An hour before, I had a handle on this term paper, a place of status in a supportive friend group, and Gretchen’s fucking heart. In the post-coital glow, with Christa’s silky hair tickling my balls, I saw all those things in midair. Maybe they wouldn’t break. Maybe they were fated to break. But I was the one who tossed them so I could grab a pair of tits. Incredible tits with cherry-brown areolas, not to mention the shaved, vice-like pussy and the lively mind they were routed through.

My head spun. I was eager for the cannabis to do its work and usher me toward the “fuck it” place.

“Jack,” Christa said sharply, maybe not for the first time. She sat up, and cupped my face in her hand. “Jack, nothing that feels like this can possibly be bad.”

I laughed out loud at that one. 

“Please don’t say that to my junkie neighbor,” I said. “He’ll be dead in a week.”

“Lookit,” she said. “You had to know what it’s supposed to feel like. If you think you can have this with Gretchen… then go try. Be my guest. I don’t think you can do it, but if you wanna try, I’ll shut the fuck up.

“But I think you know you’ll never have that with her, and you had to know what you were missing before it was too late.”

Christa was facing me by that point, her feet pulled up underneath her on the sofa. She talked with her hands and her breasts jiggled enticingly as she made these impassioned points. It was really distracting, but also effective. Gretchen and I had spent a year failing to crack each other’s sexual codes, and Christa had busted me wide open in 15 minutes. I had no idea how to apply what I’d just learned to help Gretchen, but there were already a number of things I’d like to do with – and to – Christa.

I saw her right foot twitch underneath her.

“Are you getting yourself off with your foot there?” I said. 

Christa slumped in mock embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, this is all just so hot,” she said, glancing at my lap. “And you’re totally hard for me! Jesus, Jack, listen to your body for once. Your brain isn’t always right.”

She reached out for my cock, gently grasping the shaft.

“Maybe we shouldn’t…”

“Hey, no means no and all, but that boner belongs to me,” she replied. “Check that, in me. That boner belongs in me.”

And having fucked each other senseless, Christa and I made love for the first time.

First we raided the common fridge for Cokes somebody left there, and split a granola bar I always kept in my desk. Then we found a flat sheet and laid it over the pleather couch. Next Christa fetched her little bluetooth speaker from her office, and dialed up some music. Then we pillaged all the offices – except for Gretchen’s, though neither of us mentioned it – for all the available candles, so we could shut the harsh fluorescent lighting. 

The student union building was vast and deserted, and probably wouldn’t return to full life until September, four months away. It felt to me like we were marooned.

I sat back on the couch and watched her approach me, stunned by how excited I was all over again. We had been running around erranding for 10 minutes stark naked, setting this scene, but none of that prepared me for the intention I saw in her. Christa took my hands, and climbed aboard me with a smile and a sigh.

“So where were we?” she breathed. My erect cock rose like a spike from my lap, and she lowered herself directly onto it. “Ah! There! There we were…”

And she slid herself down my pole, slowly, wetly, warmly, until my dick was totally gone and buried. We just stayed like that for a while, staring into each other’s eyes. I saw a shade of gray in the green of hers that I hadn’t noticed before. We made out for minutes on end, flipping the script from the days of high school gropings; full penetration first, and then deep kissing.

Neither of us moved to increase the friction. I was not impatient to cum or even to thrust.

We just talked quietly, and laughed. I told her I could feel her laughing in my cock, and that made her laugh even harder.

“You know, I owe my best work to you,” I said. She looked at me quizzically. “You know that short story I worked on all last semester, it was such a mess, but I was going to run it anyway. And you were like, ‘This thing is so hack.’”?

I saw the mortified recollection settle on her face.

“I was so angry with you,” I went on.

“Yeah, well I wasn’t being fair,” she said, moving my hands down to her waist, and draping her arms around my neck. “It might have been the best thing we published in that issue, if we’d run it.”

“But it was a mess,” I said, running my fingers along the soft skin of her ribcage. 

“Yeah, it was a mess,” she agreed. 

“You should read it now,” I said. 

“Yeah? I’m a little busy.” And to emphasize her point, she leaned slightly forward, and brushed her right breast against my cheek, her movement creating delicious friction at our juncture.

“Well maybe not right now. Tomorrow, when I’m done with it.”

“I thought you said it was already done.”

“You told me I hadn’t made any hard choices,” I said, recalling the stinging critique in front of the entire staff from months before. Everyone had thought she’d been overly harsh. In the midst of the heated discussion, Brad had even mumbled, “Jeez, get a room you two,” under his breath, and everyone except Gretchen had laughed. 

This was going to hurt her so badly, I knew.

“So now you know what to choose?”

“Hell no,” I said. “But I know the only really bad choice is not to choose.”

Christa’s eyes welled up, and she took my face in her hands. I felt her hips start to move, undulating in the rhythm older than time. A tear escaped her, and I couldn’t breathe.

“Choose me, Jack,” she whispered. 

I could barely nod, but I did. I also matched her gentle movements, and before long, they were less gentle. Christa began to work herself toward somewhere, stroke by stroke, on my cock, and I was determined to help her there, and to go there with her. She drew my face to her pillowy cleavage, and my teeth caught on a pebble-hard nipple as it passed. 

“Ah!” she gasped. “That’s it, Jack. That’s it, baby.”

I kissed her neck, the toned muscles providing a mesmerizing contrast to her bodacious softness. I could feel the cords of sinew on my lips, just beneath a paper-thin veil of skin, and then I bit down.

“Oh God!”

Grasping the silken globes of her ass, I pulled her closer, and our movements were a mirror image of our earlier fucking. We weren’t two things thrusting for a glimpse of oneness, but one thing playing at being two. I dug my fingernails into the soft flesh.

Chista convulsed in my arms, reared back and slapped me full across the face, one of her manicured nails leaving a scrape on my cheek. The pain surged in me, and I instinctively trusted it.

We were still one thing. Still she worked my dick, gushes of her arousal consecrating our union. I reached up her back to grab a handful of her hair, yanking her chin toward the ceiling. With my other hand I found one bouncing breast, and pinched her nipple hard between thumb and forefinger.

“Guuuhhh!” That was the only sound she made as her orgasm ripped through her. Not the paint-peeling screams from before, but something far less conscious. Her pretty face made a sound so ugly it was fucking beautiful.

After a few long moments, Christa went nearly limp, and tumbled off of me onto the sofa. I knelt on the carpeted floor between her legs, and licked her ravaged pussy until her breathing normalized. I could taste her heartbeat through her throbbing clit, and it gradually slowed.

Still rock hard, I straightened up and fed my cock back into her weeping, shaved cunt. She wrapped her powerful legs around my waist to pull me in further, reached for her clitoris, and looked me squarely in the eyes.

“I want you to cum inside me, Jack,” she said softly. “It’s where you belong.”

“I know,” I replied. “I know, I know.”

Even having cum twice already, it didn’t take much more. Christa’s pussy gripped me securely, and she was so beautiful there, soaked in sweat and whatever else, mascara run amok, hair tangled. One breast pink with irritation. My thrusts grew in power, depth and intensity. I had the sensation of drowning in deep blue water, every movement pulling me toward the cool darkness.

“Give it to me,” she commanded.

The next thing I remember we were piled on top of one another, panting and sweaty. I didn’t know if she had cum again, or what in the hell had happened to me, but whatever it was had come and gone. Had I wanted to go back to the person I was three hours prior, I don’t think I could have. We lay there a while, breathing together. Eventually I climbed onto the couch and lay beside her, my fully spent cock coming to contented rest between the cheeks of her ass, my arm draped over her. She took my hand and placed it on her breast, and we slept.

***

It wasn’t the all-nighter I had anticipated pulling.

When I’ve pushed deadlines on final papers in the past, the dawn that arrives is either guilty/panicked or guilty/relieved. This dawn was both different and the same. It was different because I couldn’t care less about the paper. I’d already crafted in my mind the email to my professor asking for an extension and accepting the consequences of lateness. No problem.

This guilt was more profound. I had already hurt Gretchen beyond measure, she just didn’t know it yet. 

I woke up first that morning, and though we’d slept in my office, I felt like I needed to go. I knew Gretchen would be up early – she always was – and every moment she was awake and unaware felt like a sin on my record. I bought her least favorite flowers – pink carnations – and a coffee she would never order – a decaf chai latte – because I didn’t want any of her favorite things to be tainted by this experience. She was going to need her favorite things.

The conversation went far better in the moment than I expected it to. She called me a manchild, a prepubescent boy, a misogynist, a selfish asshole. She said this was all so predictable and disappointing, that I couldn’t see past the end of my dick, that she was glad she had never fully surrendered to me, because it would never have been enough, and that Christa wouldn’t be enough either.

Some of these things were true, and hearing all of them gave me some relief, because if Gretchen could say them loudly and often enough, maybe she would never get around to blaming herself. I knew she’d get around to it, though, and it hurt not being one of the people to help her through those feelings.

People did help her, as I knew they would. Gretchen is one of the all-time great friends, which means she will always have a ride-or-die at each shoulder. Some of those friends were mine too, and I think it might have been much worse if it weren’t the summer, and they could hate me from afar. I stayed laser-focused on accountability for my own stuff, wishing Gretchen the best, occasionally mentioning that breakups are as important as they are difficult, blah, blah, fucking blah.

Christa’s temperament wasn’t as well-suited to the challenge as mine. She was quick to combat. Some things weren’t easy or fun for her for a little while. 

Get this: even though she’s not the one that strayed from a stable relationship, she wasn’t forgiven as quickly as I was. Our friends saw me as belonging to Gretchen, and that Christa had stolen me. As if she’d used her body to break into our happy home. As if I didn’t even have a say. Is that not fucked up?

All summer, we explored and discovered. Our bodies. Each other’s bodies. Our minds and each other’s minds. 

The electric shock that coursed through me when Christa slapped me across the face? Explored that. The cloudburst of want that came from her pussy when I bit into her neck? Spent weeks sussing that out.

Eventually she got those last two elusive inches past her lips (she was so proud). And eventually I found a limit to her appetite – it took a bottle of dark web Viagra and a tub of coconut oil, but she finally waved me off. Her disinterest lasted about 12 hours.

I also discovered that her heart belonged to me. Somewhere along the line – maybe even before that insane night – she invested all her hope in me. Eventually – a couple years later – that’s another debt that would be paid in pain, when I couldn’t respond in kind. I belonged to Christa body and mind, but my heart turned out to be no more hers than Gretchen’s.

It would become clear that she wasn’t the end of my journey, only the most amazing beginning I had yet experienced. Like some perverse mother, she pulled me into her birth canal and I emerged a new person.

By the time Christa and I returned to campus in late August, we were used to each other, and so it wasn’t long before people got used to us. I think that seeing us together proved that the cataclysm wasn’t just destruction. That something of possible value had been created. Sadly, Gretchen went her own way, giving up her job and her office and many of her roles in our social scene, choosing to spend herself with people who could afford uncomplicated feelings about me.

But all that gloopy mess was in the future when I tried to tiptoe around my office that May morning. I wrote a really sweet note asking Christa to dinner that night. And I thought I was being pretty quiet until I went to open the door, and her adorable, pedicured foot blocked my way.

“One more time,” she said, sleepily.

“What? Jesus.” I replied. 

“One more time.”

“There are going to be a lot more times.”

That made her smile, and she started laughing.

“Yeah there are!” she said. “So many times, baby. But seriously, one more time.”