Alternates: Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

After we get back from dinner I say goodbye to everybody in the lobby and the elevator and walk Keeley back to her room and smile at my phone because people are sending bouncy castle suggestions for Annalise in the group chat. Her favorite so far is one shaped like a pirate ship.

I knock on Joan’s door.

She lets me in, and I go straight to her bed and sit down. She stands by the doorway and looks at me from across the room.

“How are you?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Just fine.”

“Nervous for tomorrow?”

“Of course I am, but then it will be over.”

“Rafa says you almost backed out this afternoon and he had to talk you out of losing on purpose. And that you threw up before today’s game.”

She shrugs again and leans her head back against the doorframe, so her gaze is directed somewhere near the ceiling and not at me anymore. I find that, despite everything, I wish she was still looking at me.

“I throw up before every competition,” she says. “I think I said this once to you already, but I like winning more than I dislike throwing up.”

“I noticed that.”

Her chin snaps back down and she stares at me. “I thought you would.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a smart person, and I thought-”

“No.” I sound too exasperated. Dial it back, dial it back. “Why did you do that? I know you knew that Final Factor question. Why get it wrong on purpose?”

“To apologize.”

She says it so flatly - like her clue-answering voice on The Q - that I almost feel those two words punch me in the chest. What the fuck kind of apology is that?

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I saw your score, and I knew I couldn’t tell the producers, but at least I could tell you that I felt bad about it. I am sorry. Of course it wasn’t my fault that they showed it, but I still wish I hadn’t seen it.”

“Oh.” That’s the worst apology I’ve ever received, but at least she tried. “So Rafa had to talk you into staying on, huh?”

“No, he didn’t.” She says it breezily as she crosses the room to sit beside me. “But right before we filmed I got a message from my mother. Diane and Francis are out of the hospital, and my mother was able to apply for the hospital’s financial assistance program, thank goodness. The bills will still be over ten thousand dollars, but at least I know now that I’ll have enough to cover it no matter what. I was about to tell Rafa that, but I heard the way he was talking about you, and it was fairly obvious that he would do the same thing to me if he thought I was too concerned about winning. I didn’t want to have to try to beat both him and Duncan, and I wasn’t keen on the idea of him bad-mouthing me to you and trying to manipulate us both. So when he asked what it was I wanted to tell him, I made something up about my nerves. It was hardly even a lie. I was nervous. But I think I understand you better now. That’s why I made sure to apologize.”

“So you didn’t have to win to cover the cost of the bills?”

Joan shakes her head. She’s smiling at me, so sweet, the same smile she had on her face when she told me whose test she faked. “No. It’s like I said. I just like winning. And I think you do too.”

I swallow. My throat is burning like I just drank an entire jar of vanilla extract. Never mind the apology, I guess. “I know exactly what you mean.” And I do.

“So you aren’t mad?”

I swallow again. Keep it the fuck together, Mickey. You’re going to ruin the entire thing if you can’t keep it the fuck together. Smile. Be cute. Or she’ll see right through you to the Mickey-sized pile of money on the other side.

“I’m not mad,” I assure her, breathing deep because it’s either that or talking through gritted teeth. “I will be if you don’t kiss me soon though.”

Joan giggles - and heaven help me, I still get a sweet little flutter of a gay crisis, or rather a Joan crisis, when I hear her laugh - and leans in to kiss me, gently but firmly, on the mouth, which means I can’t say anything to incriminate myself further. Thank goodness.

I feel those same nerves from last time Joan and I slept together activating, tingling, warning me to go, go, go, speed up, more, now, because who knows when this is going to happen again? But unlike last time I’m able to soothe them with a few breaths and slow myself down. If I’m going to stay here overnight, I’m going to have to give Joan exactly what she wants, and tire her out at the same time, and giving in to the panicky racehorse at the back of my brain won’t do either of those things. And besides, this is certainly going to be the last time I’ll be in her bed, at least if I manage to pull the phone thing off, so I might as well enjoy it.

So I take my time as Joan kisses me, and her shoulders squared towards me make it easy to put a palm on each of them, like the handlebars of a bicycle, and apply a little pressure until she leans back and her head touches the pillow. I pull a leg up, swing it over her stomach, and settle with a knee on either side of her hips. She breaks the kiss to take her glasses off. This time, when I look at her eyes, no metaphors rise to my tongue. They’re brown. They’re pretty. They’re framed by lashes as thick and dark as her hair. They’re Joan’s. That’s the only thing that’s important about them, I think, is that they belong to Joan.

“You’re much better at this than you were before.”

I snort. “Thanks.”

She shakes her head at my sarcasm. “I enjoyed it anyway. But it’s unusual that you’re this much better this quickly.”

“I have less on my mind now than I did last night, I guess.”

“Hmm.”

She leans up, angling her chin upward, suspending her head just upon the pillow so her hair appears to hold her up, and kisses me again. I lower myself, from bracing up on my hands to bracing up on my elbows, with my palms flat against the bed on either side of her face, and roll my hips against hers, focusing on moving only one muscle at a time, the pace of a slow-breaking wave. Joan, always unselfconscious, always doing whatever she has decided is the best course of action, reaches up and puts her hands on the small of my back and pushes me to move faster, but I smile against her mouth - it doesn’t feel like my smile - and pull back just enough to murmur, “Not yet.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“It’s good.”

“Good.”

I kiss her cheeks, her neck, her chest. Like a charm against tomorrow morning, I leave little pink-and-purple marks behind with my teeth, high on her neck, places that The Q’s cameras will absolutely pick up, places Eddie will have to cover up. You can’t be on TV for a national audience, even if you’re trying to make sure that national audience is full of cool teens, with the evidence that you had sex last night all over your neck. And so Joan can’t be on TV tomorrow. Please, please let this work, and let her not be on TV tomorrow, I think, adding one last mark, the sweet purple of blueberry skin, to my constellation and moving down to her collarbones. Then, with her shirt off, between her breasts to her stomach, and then her hip bones, and then as she wriggles out of her pants without getting up, arching her back to slide them down her legs, I consider not doing this. I consider finishing up here and going back to my room and calling my dad to tell him I was the fourth-highest scorer on this year’s Student Showcase and, technically speaking, I’ve never lost a game of The Q, and isn’t he proud of me? I consider just letting her have this. She’s so beautiful, stretched out smooth and brown and naked on the snow-white sheets, and her eyes shine in the light like she’s pleading with me for something. Poor, sweet Joan.

I think of playing rock-paper-scissors with her and slowly realizing the pattern. I think of her clearing her throat, arching her eyebrows, whispering about me with Rafa when I’m just out of earshot, getting terse at the very mention of dinner. I think about our own private little world.

“Is this why you picked Keeley?” I ask her.

“She was the best player,” Joan replies.

“That’s not what I asked.”

And, to her credit, she doesn’t break eye contact or look abashed in any way. Joan holds my gaze with her pretty brown eyes, devoid of metaphors, and nods. “I like having you to myself.”

I feel a soft smile curl my lips, which is strange, because I really, really don’t feel like smiling right now. “You could have just told me.”

“This was easier. And it worked.”

I don’t know how many last straws I’ve been through at this point. I hope that’s the last one. The last last straw.

“Better than you know,” I murmur, and lean down to kiss the inside of her thigh. I leave another mark. Just because I can.

I take my time, first with my tongue and then with my fingers and then with my tongue again, leaving her less and less time to recover in between and drawing it out for more and more minutes. I glance up at the clock occasionally when I’m sure her eyes are closed and the cheerful digital numbers flick past ten before I decide my jaw muscles could use a break.

“I’m exhausted,” Joan says.

“That’s fine.”

“If you want me to do anything for you, it will have to be quick.”

I’m not sure why, but I feel my stomach drop like I’ve just gone over the crest of the hill on a roller coaster, and I can’t think of anything in the world I want less than Joan doing anything for me, quickly or otherwise.

“No,” I say, after what I hope is an appropriately considerate pause. “I’m wiped out too. Okay if I stay here tonight?”

“Sure,” Joan agrees sleepily. She’s already yawning, stretching her arms over her head. “Do you need to shower?”

“No, I did before I came over.”

“Fine. I’m going to wait until tomorrow morning.”

She rolls over, turns the light off, and says, into the darkness, “Good night, Mickey.”

“Good night, Joan,” I say.

I wait for any lingering heat between my legs to fade and watch the faint yellow light from the streetlamps on the sidewalk below and the floodlights from the studios in the distance brighten and fade and brighten again around the cracks in the curtains. Her phone is plugged in, charging on the bedside table, face-up, but either she’s got it on silent or she’s not getting any notifications. I can’t do anything with it now. She’ll want to check it in the morning. I wait five minutes, and then another ten to be safe and get out of bed. Joan shifts, and I freeze, but she’s deeply asleep now and her breathing is slow and steady. I tiptoe around the bed, making a circuit of the room, squinting to see by those faint yellow slits of light. One of my feet hits something squishy, and I recoil, nearly losing my balance, but when I look down I realize it’s my pants and my shirt in a pile on the floor. Right.

Her backpack is on the desk chair, which has been pushed neatly in until the straps of her backpack just touch the tiny desk, with its Jewel-branded pen and notepad set down in the corner at a perfect right angle to its edges. I move by inches, grasping the zipper in my right hand and the backpack in my left to prevent any sudden movements. I slide the zipper down one tooth at a time, wincing any time my hand twitches a little too fast and the zipper lets out a little buzz. Joan’s eyes, I can see when I squint back at her every few seconds, are still closed, and her mouth hangs slightly open. She’s hugging a pillow to her chest. She looks like a little girl.

After what, by the clock, is only three minutes but feels like much longer, I have her backpack entirely unzipped. Her plastic bag of sanitizer and wipes is in there. Perfect. I spend another two minutes slowly running my fingernail back and forth through the zip-top of the bag to loosen it without making noise and prying it open one tiny section at a time. I leave it open and spend three minutes zipping the backpack most of the way back up, although I leave enough space to slip a hand inside without disturbing the zipper.

Tomorrow morning, I’ve decided, I’ll wait until Joan takes a shower. Even if she decides not to, she’ll probably need to use the bathroom, and this will only take a few moments if I’m quick and cautious about it. I’ll take the hand sanitizer out of the bag so it won’t feel unusually heavy and hide it in the desk drawer. I’ll slip her phone, with a voice recording already running, into the bag, zip it back up, close her backpack, and be back in bed before she’s even finished shampooing her hair. Maybe before she’s even started - she has a lot of hair and I imagine shampooing it takes a while. Just to make sure I wake up in time, I set an alarm on my phone for seven in the morning. I use the bathroom, so I have an excuse if Joan wakes up while I’m climbing into bed.

I don’t turn the light on, since her bathroom is just the same as mine and I know my way around the Jewel’s hotel rooms by now, so I can barely see my face in the mirror as I’m washing my hands. I’m just a shadow, really. Or a ghost. Apparently the reason the Bloody Mary game has all those legends around it is that, in a dark room by candlelight, if you stare in a mirror long enough, your brain tricks you into seeing all sorts of weird stuff because the lighting is always shifting and it’s dim and your brain gets bored of experiencing the same thing if all you do is stare at the mirror. It’s the same reason people have hallucinations in sensory deprivation tanks: when your brain gets bored enough, it makes stuff up. So girls would light a candle and stare into a mirror until they saw the faces of their future husbands, and eventually it became something you do in the school bathroom on a dare in fourth grade. I just lied and said I’d seen her as a kid because I didn’t want to stay in a dark bathroom when there was apparently a ghost prowling around, so I definitely didn’t look in the mirror long enough to have seen anything.

I stare at the face in the mirror for a moment, wondering if I’ll see anyone over my shoulder or if I’m the only ghost around tonight, but then I realize that if Joan woke up when the toilet flushed she’ll be wondering why I’m not back in bed yet. So I dry my hands and wink at the face in the mirror just in case - I’m sure people don’t often flirt with Bloody Mary. Or with Blackout Mickey.

Joan is indeed awake, peering at me through half-open eyelids as I climb back into bed.

“Sorry,” I murmur. “Just had to pee.”

“‘S fine,” she murmurs back. “C’mere.”

Sleepy Joan, unlike Regular Daytime Joan, is a cuddler. I lie there, on my back, an arm around her torso as she rests her head on my chest, right over my sternum, until her breathing gets deep and slow again and I can gently push her off me. Cuddling with her gives me the same roller-coaster drop feeling in my stomach. I fight the urge to get as far away from her as fast as I can.

It takes a long time for me to fall asleep.

Joan isn’t up yet when my alarm goes off in the morning, and I frantically shut it off before she hears it. Thankfully she doesn’t wake up, or at the very least her eyes are still closed. I roll over so my back is to her, so she can’t tell at first glance whether I’m awake or asleep, and scroll through the group chat. Annalise has inspired a wave of bouncy castle recommendations and much more discussion about the stupid purchases people will be making with a minimum of twenty-five grand, and I have to scroll past over a hundred messages, many of them links to bouncy castles and custom-engraved shot glasses and bed-sized beanbag chairs, before I reach the bottom: a drunken message written jointly by Laurel and Jake, on Jake’s phone, thanking us all for being “fantanastic” and professing their misspelled but heartfelt affection for each other, the rest of the contestants, Morty, Yasmin, Eddie, The Q as a whole, and the invention of dark rum. I can’t help but smile at that. As entertaining as Jake and Laurel’s good-natured debates are, I think I like them even better when they’re in total agreement.

Joan’s alarm goes off at 7:17, a time I’m sure she calculated to leave herself precisely enough time to complete her morning routine before Yasmin arrives to retrieve her, Mark, and Natalie. The moment I hear it, I tuck my phone under my pillow and roll over, closing my eyes and partially opening them again.

“What time is it?” I mumble, trying to sound sleepy.

“Seven-seventeen,” Joan says, all business, no trace of sleep in her voice. I don’t know how she does it. “You can feel free to go back to sleep. I’m going to take a shower. I’ll wake you up on my way out, and you’ll want to get ready then anyway, because you’ll have to be on the lot an hour after I will.”

“Sounds good.” I roll back over and close my eyes, but the thrill she’s sent through my nervous system with the announcement of her shower is keeping me so wide awake, they should bottle the feeling and sell it as an energy drink.

I feel her side of the bed dip and raise itself back up as she swings her feet out of bed and stands up. I hear her unplug her phone - wait, fuck, oh no, is she taking it into the bathroom with her? No, no, leave it - and then, mercifully, I hear her put it back down somewhere. I’ll have to find it once she’s in the bathroom, but at least she’s not holding it. I hear her pad barefoot over to the bathroom door.

I hear the door shut.

I hear the door lock.

I hear the water of the shower begin to run.

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.