Queenie(17)

“They’re not going to fall out!” I laughed. “But I don’t know how wet I’m going to get with a headache.”

“Okay. Maybe you should tie it up.” Tom lay back and watched as I stood up and ran over to my rucksack. I reached inside for a hairband and ran back over to the bed, climbing under the covers.

“Could you not just stare at me like that, please? This is the first time you’ve seen me naked, and I’m going to worry that you’re looking at all of my bad bits,” I said, turning away from him.

“What? You don’t have any bad bits.” Tom sat up and kissed my shoulder.

“I am made up of bad bits, actually,” I told him as I wrapped my hair in a bun and tied it on top of my head. “I’m actually one whole bad bit.”

“Nonsense.” He laughed, pulling me on top of him. I could feel his erection through his boxers. “I’ve been observing closely. There’s nothing bad about you.”

“Oh! Who’s this?” I asked, moving my hand down.

“I could make a joke about naming my penis, but now isn’t really the time, is it?” Tom asked.

“Tom,” I said. “There is honestly never a time for that.”

? ? ?

“I call him ‘the destroyer,’?” Adi said confidently. “And the destroyer wants to be inside that mouth.” He winked.

“Sorry, no.” I’m very particular about that sort of thing. Interestingly, my gag reflex is fine, it’s more the sexual power play that I think about.

“Ah, come on, I beg you, suck it,” Adi said, frowning.

“It’s not going to happen, I’m afraid,” I said.

“Will you kiss it, then?”

“Will I kiss your penis? No, I won’t.” I only wanted a bit of sex to tide me over, not all of this back and forth.

“Just a peck, I beg you.” Adi pouted.

“. . . I don’t know what to tell you, sorry.”

“Just lick it one time.” He shrugged.

“Nope.”

“All right, spit on it, then,” Adi suggested.

“I just feel like, the more you ask me these things, the more you’re going to get annoyed. So I would stop here.”

“All right, all right, jeez. You black girls are so up yourselves, innit.” Adi sighed. “If I’m not getting my dick sucked, shall we move to the back?”

Was that the automotive alternative to moving to the bedroom? Wanting to get things over and done with, I squeezed myself between the driver and passenger seat with no grace and pulled my dress over my head.

Adi joined me and beckoned me onto his lap. He grunted with satisfaction as I lowered myself onto him and pressed my chest against his, resting my chin on his shoulder.

I didn’t want to kiss him. That would be too intimate. I moved up and down rhythmically, slowly, measured, listening to Adi’s moans. I kept the streetlight in my sights the whole time. I’m not sure that I blinked once.



* * *



“Have you ever had sex in a car before?” I stuck my head out the door of the neon-lit staff kitchen before I said anything else.

“What?” Darcy asked. I rinsed my Daily Read branded mug under the boiling water tap and threw a tea bag into it.

“A car,” I repeated, opening the ten-foot-tall chrome high-tech fridge and taking the milk out.

“No. Have you?” Darcy took the milk from me and poured it into her mug, directly onto the tea bag. As always, I turned my nose up at her technique.

“After the party,” I said, shame flooding my body.

“With the Uber driver?” Darcy asked, slamming her mug onto the counter. “Queenie!”

“What?” I snorted. “No? Obviously not?”

We quickly finished making our tea and scuttled into the meeting room next door. All of the rooms in the building had glass walls, so we laid out some pens and papers and a rogue iPad so it looked like we were talking about work. “Not with my Uber driver, with Adi,” I told her, watching people moving around the street below.

“Are you serious? That sleazy guy who’s always asking about the size of your bum?” Darcy asked, mouth agape.

“I know, but I was just feeling so lonely and shit after that party, so I sent him a text not really thinking that he’d respond, but he did, and now I feel so bad,” I said quietly.

“Because of Tom?” she asked. “Well, you are on a break, so what you do in this period doesn’t matter.”

“Partly because of that, but mainly because it’s not me! I don’t do this sort of thing!” I yelped.

“Well, look. You’re going through something confusing, so you’re allowed to do some out-of-character stuff,” Darcy reassured me. “And you know I would never judge you, but . . . I hope you were at least careful.”

“We were careful,” I lied. I opened my mouth to speak again, knowing that I should probably tell her about the miscarriage. “No sleazy babies on the way.”



* * *



A day of very minimal work passed, and I stayed late to avoid going back to the house I still wasn’t anywhere near settled into. On the bus home, after a day dodging waves of guilt after my auto encounter and of not doing any work at all, I stared at mine and Tom’s message chain, willing him to reply. Nothing since his “clean break” reinforcement on Saturday night. My phone buzzed in my hand, but after checking my texts and WhatsApp and e-mail, I couldn’t figure out why. I scrolled across screens and saw an app with a heart icon, a red notification dot in the right-hand corner. It was the OkCupid app that the party girls had installed on my phone. I took a deep breath and opened it up cautiously, having no idea what it would contain.