Badd Boy by Jasinda Wilder
"Did you guys fight?"
"Did she leave you?"
"Xavier, did Harlow break your heart?"
"What's it like dating a celebrity, Xavier?"
Just before closing the door on them, I paused and looked back at them, "Harlow is not here anymore," I said, "so...go away."
This only resulted in a fresh onslaught of questions, but once it became clear that nothing else exciting was going to happen, they eventually trickled away. We had to close the bar for three days, but eventually they all left town. Business reopened, and life went back to what it had been. Sort of.
I couldn't get Low out of my head. At first I tried ignoring the thoughts of her when they cropped up--which was every thirty seconds, roughly speaking--but that only made me distracted and clumsy. At work, I cooked the wrong food, forgot what I was doing, burned food, and burned my fingers. At home, I was tense, stressed, irritable, and prone to snapping at everyone, even Dru who was one of my favorite people.
They all tolerated me as best they could.
Things should have returned to normal.
Cook food.
Read books.
Build robots.
Run, workout, sleep.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Now, though, nothing was the same. I couldn't run down the docks without imagining Low's yacht berthed at the end. When I slept, I dreamed of her. When I worked out, I saw her eyes on me, her gaze raking over me like I was something she wanted to eat. When I took a shower, I fantasized about her. I fantasized about her naked body, about her in a robe, in my room...untying the robe and letting it fall to the floor, and then crawling across the bed toward me. I would touch myself, trying to relieve the pressure and the ache, but I couldn't.
It didn't feel right.
It wasn't her touch. My touch still felt alien and wrong, whereas her touch had felt perfect and right.
Her touch had brought me to life.
Set me on fire.
My own touch just...grated on my nerves. I always gave up without finding release, which meant the only way I had to vent that frustration and pent-up energy was through exercise.
Which I did to an unhealthy level.
I punished myself, is what I did.
I ran until my legs gave out, until my lungs burned as if I'd breathed fire. Until I couldn't run anymore and had to literally hobble home in agony. I hit the free weights until one day Bast found me trapped under the bar, unable to finish the last rep, and banned me from the free weights until I could "figure my shit out," as he put it.
I stopped sleeping almost entirely, except for two or three hours here and there.
Everywhere I went, everything I did, Harlow was on my mind. In my heart.
On my skin.
After almost a month of this, Bast caught me as I was heading out for another brutal run. I intended to run until I passed out, because I literally could not stop thinking about Low, couldn't get her hair and her eyes and her skin and her kiss and her body out of my mind, couldn't erase her voice from my heart, couldn't stop craving her presence.
"Yo, Xavier. Hold up," Bast said. "I'm coming with you."
I stared at him. "No offense meant, brother, but I do not think you could keep up."
"So slow down for my big carcass."
"This is an intervention, I take it," I said.
He laughed. "Yeah, actually."
I sighed. "Say your piece, and then I will run."
It was just past dawn, my favorite time to run.
Bast only shook his head. "You need to really listen. Not just wait for me to finish talking."
I exhaled in irritation. "I do not want to listen." I kicked my foot up behind me, grabbed my toes, and stretched my quad. "I want to run."
"You can't escape how you're feeling, Xavier."
"I'm not trying to escape it, I'm trying to quiet it. I'm trying to..." I sighed. "Fine. I'm trying to escape it."
Bast laughed. "Trust me, I know." He clapped me on the back with a huge paw, and guided me back inside the darkened bar, all the stools up on the tables and bar. "Come on. Just sit and listen, okay? How often have I ever asked you to hear me out, Xavier?"
"Rarely, if ever."
"Exactly. So just give me this, okay? And try to give me the real you, not the encyclopedia-professor-robot you."
"Spock, Low calls it," I said, before I could stop myself.
Bast laughed. "Exactly. No Spock."
"I'll do my best," I said, following him back upstairs to the apartment.
He poured us both coffee, and we sat at the kitchen table, facing each other. "Okay, bud. What I have to say is pretty simple: you're being a pain in the ass, man. You're fucking up orders in the kitchen, you're snapping at everyone, you're damn near killing yourself physically, and it's clear you're not eating or sleeping. I clearly have no fuckin' idea what happened between you and that actress chick, but you need to find a way past it. Because this shit has got to stop."
I stared at him, disbelieving. "Wow. That's...spectacularly helpful."
"I wasn't trying to be helpful. I was trying to say what I had to say, for the sake of all of us that gotta live and work with you."
"I thought you were going to come to me with some kind of sage, brotherly advice."
"I'd have to know the situation to do that," he said, and sipped coffee, eyeing me across the rim. "All I know is, you had some sort of a thing with Harlow Grace, but you didn't know it was her, and now she's gone, and you're a fuckin' disaster. And, oh yeah, she mentioned that you're fuckin' autistic or some shit, but you never told any of us? The fuck is that about?"
"You are upset."
"I'm your big brother. I damn near raised you by my fuckin' self. So yeah, I'm upset you didn't bother sharing that little piece of information about yourself." He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "But then, you're a Badd. We're not exactly known for our tendency to share personal shit with each other."
"It never seemed to matter," I said.
Bast slammed his mug down so hard coffee sloshed out over his hand. "Bullshit."
I blinked at his anger. "Excuse me?"
"That's bullshit! You're my baby brother. How the fuck you think that doesn't matter?" He wiped at his hand, wincing. "How long have you known?"
"I began suspecting my junior year. I spent the summer between my junior and senior year researching and self-examining for markers and symptoms, and I was one hundred percent convinced by the end of the summer."
"A doctor officially diagnose this?"
"No. But there's no need. I am as certain as medical knowledge will allow." I quirked an eyebrow at him. "Have you ever known me to be in error when I claim to know something with certainty?"
He sighed. "No, I guess not." He shook out his hand. "Fuckin' burned my hand, goddammit."
"That's what you get for outbursts of anger."
"Shut up, dork." He grimaced again, and then seemed to dismiss the pain, returning to sipping his coffee. "What's it mean, then? This autism thing."
I spent the next half hour explaining what I knew about myself and about the disorder, the effects and ramifications, how I displayed it, everything.
He was quiet a long time, thinking. "So, there's no cure or anything?"
I actually laughed. "It's a disorder, Sebastian, not a disease. I am different, not sick."
"Right, sorry." Another long silence. He finished his coffee and poured more. "So..." Bast started, hesitated, and started over. "Would it be weird if I said it's hard for me to feel like this changes how I see you?"
"I hope it does not. I'm still just...me. The same as I've always been. Nothing is changed. You merely have a term now which encapsulates what makes me different from most people."
I finally remembered my coffee, but it was cold; I dumped it out, poured fresh, and made a new pot. When I sat down again, I could tell Bast had things to say.
"What happened with you and Harlow?" he asked.
I sighed. "A lo
t, and not enough, and too much."
He laughed. "Oddly, I think I get that. Care to elaborate?"
"No. Not really."
He frowned. "Come on, Xavier. You never talk about yourself. And in this case, I think you really need to get this shit out. I know I'm not as smart as you, but I may actually have some sage brotherly wisdom to impart. I've been through some shit myself, you know."
"I wouldn't even know where to begin."
"Why are you being such a dick? Start there."
"Well, by all means, don't mince words, Sebastian," I laughed. Sobering, I sighed, scrubbing both hands through my hair. "It's...everything."
"Helpful."
I sipped coffee for a moment, trying to find the words. "I seriously don't know where to start. Discussing emotional issues is...very hard for me."
"How do you feel about her?"
I shook my head. "That's not a great place to start."
Bast laughed, a sarcastic snort. "Dude, you're being so difficult right now." He leaned back in his chair, hand curled around his mug, resting the bottom of it on his chest. "How about this--the day you came running back here half-naked, carrying your clothes, freaking the fuck out...what happened?"
I took a long drink of my coffee, tuning out my innate dislike of talking about myself, instead focusing on making sense of that day. "I suppose what you'd have to understand first, in order for that day to make sense to you, is that my relationship with Low was, from the very start...unlike any other interaction I've ever had with another person. I've never felt anyone to be as...interested, I suppose, in me. I don't mean that as an indictment of you or any of the guys, but you're my brothers. I've never had friends, not really. I've never trusted anyone enough to allow them close enough to develop a friendship, and I wouldn't know what to do in a friendship anyway.
"All the people I went to school with were...well...I loathed the large majority of them, and the rest simply didn't register on my radar. So when I met Low--which happened by accident, by the way--from the very start she just seemed fascinated by me. Curious. Interested. And all of that felt very nonjudgmental. Which was totally new to me, considering the way most people treat me, given my predilection for highfalutin syntax and verbal formality, and my tendency to wax eloquent on any number of topics. I suppose I've always just assumed everyone is judging me, because I always feel judged."
"That's not fair to a lot of the people who meet you, though, bro," Bast said. "Not everyone is judging you."
I shrugged. "I know that logically, but try telling that to my emotional experience."
"Fair enough." He rolled a finger. "So, she was interested in you."
"At first, I wondered if she was interested in me merely as...a curiosity, you know? But she kept looking at me in odd ways, and trying to sit close to me, and touching me."
Bast's eyes rose. "And you let her get away with that?"
I nodded. "I still have no idea why, but yes. There's something unique about my physical and neurological reaction to Low touching me. And I mean any kind of touch, not just...you know."
"No, I don't know."
"I mean innocent, platonic, friendly physical contact, not sexual touch."
Bast covered a grin behind his coffee. "I see," he muttered, into the mug.
"If you make me feel embarrassed by the things I'm saying, I'll stop talking," I warned.
He held up a hand palm out. "Not my intent, bud. But this is new territory for me, hearing this outta you."
"Trust me, it's new for me, too." I gathered my train of thought. "So, she would sit close to me, which by itself is hard for me. But as much as it felt weird and uncomfortable and made me anxious to have her that close, there was another part of me that liked it. I deeply, desperately enjoyed the way it felt to sit next to her, even if it was just her leg only sort of brushing mine, or her hip, or whatever. It...excited me."
"I know that feeling," Bast said. "Like...you love how it feels, and it's exciting and exhilarating, but you're also scared of how it makes you feel, and scared she'll realize all of a sudden what she's doing and stop doing it."
"Exactly," I said. "I also am very untrusting of women."
"Why?"
I sighed. "That is a long story, one which I do not have the emotional wherewithal to share at this time." I sipped coffee, continued. "Suffice to say, I experienced the cheerfully vicious cruelty of high school students at the hands of the most popular girl in the school, in such a horrifically embarrassing manner as to scar me for life and turn me against all women."
Bast blinked. "Dude. The fuck did she do to you?"
I groaned. "Short version--she tricked me into thinking she liked me, lured me to her house, and then secretly live-streamed to the entire the school as she tricked me into admitting to having a crush on her, and then caused me to...er...prematurely ejaculate into my pants. Which, I emphasize, she live-streamed to the entire school. After which she mocked me in the most cruel way possible, making it brutally obvious how pathetic she found me."
Bast growled. "That fuckin' bitch."
"Yes, well, I was naive."
"No excuse. Even less excuse, if anything."
"Thus the reason I don't trust women. That was my one experience with a girl telling me she liked me, and it was a sick, cruel joke."
"Yeah, I don't blame you."
"So, when Low demonstrated interest, it was difficult--meaning, nearly impossible--to believe her. To trust her. To feel as if she was being genuine."
"She give you any hint that she wasn't genuine?"
I shook my head. "No. And I knew that logically. But emotionally, I was too scared. To distrusting. And plus, the closer we became as friends, the more she pushed our friendship into a more physically...affectionate, shall we say, sort of realm, the more uncomfortable I became. I just...I wanted to be able to enjoy the touch of a woman who seemed to genuinely like me--and not just any woman, but the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, let alone met or spent time with. And at that time, I had no clue she was famous. All I knew was that she was clearly wealthy, and so beautiful it was hard to breathe or think around her."
Bast shook his head, chuckling. "Fuckin' hell, man, I do not blame you there. And listen, my wife is the absolute center of my universe, okay? Just so we're clear--I love her with every single goddamn molecule inside me, and there's no one in the world who can compare to her in my eyes. But...Harlow Grace? Man, that woman is fine...as...fuck."
"Indeed she is," I said. "So, yeah. She overwhelmed me. Being interested in me, wanting to spend time with me, touching me, overwhelmed me. And then I told her the story of what happened with Brittany, and that sort of led into...um...it's hard to remember exactly how it happened. I told the story to her, and then she was upset about it, and upset that I didn't trust her. She said she liked me, that she was interested in me, and somehow that led to her...flirting with me, I suppose. Speaking in a low voice, getting very much inside my personal space, up very close, putting her hands on my shoulders and chest and stomach."
"She wanted you, man," Bast said.
"I wanted to believe exactly that. But I never know what a person's true intent is by their body language. Sometimes I think they mean one thing, and they really mean another. I often misread social situations, and take what people say literally--you know this about me."
"Yeah."
"So when the most beautiful woman in the world--to me, and perhaps literally, now that I know she's famous--seemed interested in me and was flirting with me, and when my one experience with a woman turned out to be a cruel prank...I doubted my own interpretation of her intent. But she made it clear to me that she meant it. That she was attracted to me."
"And how did you feel about that?"
"Disbelieving, but longing to believe. So attracted to her it terrified me, and this...this...need. Like...when you haven't eaten all day and you're so hungry the idea of a delicious meal makes you feel very literally mad? As in crazy mad, not angry mad. That kind of
manic, desperate hunger, but for her. For her to touch me, and more than anything to be able to touch her. To put my hands on her and see if she felt as soft as she looked, to know if touching her was as amazing as merely looking at her. But I was terrified, you know?"
"So you bolted?"
I shook my head. "Not immediately." I swallowed hard. "I pushed myself to trust her. To...go with the situation, to trust what she was saying and allow what she was doing."
"Which was?"
"Touching me, and encouraging me to touch her in return."
He laughed. "Dude. You had Harlow Grace throwing herself at you."
"To me, she's just...Low."
"Fair enough." He rolled his hand in a keep going gesture. "So you made out or whatever?"
"Or whatever," I said, blushing.
His eyebrows shot up. "Like, you messed around?" He leaned forward. "Look, I'm only asking because I feel like you really need to talk this out, okay? And you know you can trust me, right? Like, this'll stay between you and me."
"And Dru, I imagine," I said.
Bast tilted his head to one side, nodding. "Yeah, probably. We tell each other everything."
I closed my eyes, reciting pi in my head and breathing through the anxiety and doubt, trying to quiet the frantic assault of thoughts and emotions.
"I believe you might say that Low seduced me." I hesitated. "But not in a manipulative, malicious sense. More that she somehow drew me out of my nerves and fears and doubts and encouraged me both verbally and nonverbally to act on my desires and urges. We...we kissed. Clothes came off. She...touched me. She let me touch her. And...touching, and being touched, and enjoying it? That was utterly magical, Sebastian. Like nothing else I've ever experienced in my life. For a few moments, I forgot about being...me--I forgot about being different. I was able to get out of my head and just live in my body, just experience physical sensation for what it was. She showed me how to make her feel good, and allowed me to explore her body and her beauty, she allowed me to explore what it was like and what it meant to touch a woman, to know her body in an intimate sense."
I paused, remembering, delving into visual memory of Low, naked, her breasts in my hands and her core against my mouth, her moans of pleasure and screams of release, her voice begging me not to stop, lost in the rapture of my attention.
"And then..." I hesitated again, continued falteringly. "I...she began touching me. Showing me what she enjoyed about my body. Showing me how she wanted to make me feel good in return. Being touched, for me, in any capacity, feels somewhat like...an electric tingle or shock. I'm struggling to find an appropriate metaphor...if my body is a campfire, someone touching me at all, for a handshake or a hug or an accidental contact, it's like tossing a piece of paper on the fire--a brief but intense flare-up. The way Low was touching me? Sexually? It was...her touch to my most intimate, sensitive places was like...like pouring the highest octane rocket fuel on the fire."
"Did she leave you?"
"Xavier, did Harlow break your heart?"
"What's it like dating a celebrity, Xavier?"
Just before closing the door on them, I paused and looked back at them, "Harlow is not here anymore," I said, "so...go away."
This only resulted in a fresh onslaught of questions, but once it became clear that nothing else exciting was going to happen, they eventually trickled away. We had to close the bar for three days, but eventually they all left town. Business reopened, and life went back to what it had been. Sort of.
I couldn't get Low out of my head. At first I tried ignoring the thoughts of her when they cropped up--which was every thirty seconds, roughly speaking--but that only made me distracted and clumsy. At work, I cooked the wrong food, forgot what I was doing, burned food, and burned my fingers. At home, I was tense, stressed, irritable, and prone to snapping at everyone, even Dru who was one of my favorite people.
They all tolerated me as best they could.
Things should have returned to normal.
Cook food.
Read books.
Build robots.
Run, workout, sleep.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Now, though, nothing was the same. I couldn't run down the docks without imagining Low's yacht berthed at the end. When I slept, I dreamed of her. When I worked out, I saw her eyes on me, her gaze raking over me like I was something she wanted to eat. When I took a shower, I fantasized about her. I fantasized about her naked body, about her in a robe, in my room...untying the robe and letting it fall to the floor, and then crawling across the bed toward me. I would touch myself, trying to relieve the pressure and the ache, but I couldn't.
It didn't feel right.
It wasn't her touch. My touch still felt alien and wrong, whereas her touch had felt perfect and right.
Her touch had brought me to life.
Set me on fire.
My own touch just...grated on my nerves. I always gave up without finding release, which meant the only way I had to vent that frustration and pent-up energy was through exercise.
Which I did to an unhealthy level.
I punished myself, is what I did.
I ran until my legs gave out, until my lungs burned as if I'd breathed fire. Until I couldn't run anymore and had to literally hobble home in agony. I hit the free weights until one day Bast found me trapped under the bar, unable to finish the last rep, and banned me from the free weights until I could "figure my shit out," as he put it.
I stopped sleeping almost entirely, except for two or three hours here and there.
Everywhere I went, everything I did, Harlow was on my mind. In my heart.
On my skin.
After almost a month of this, Bast caught me as I was heading out for another brutal run. I intended to run until I passed out, because I literally could not stop thinking about Low, couldn't get her hair and her eyes and her skin and her kiss and her body out of my mind, couldn't erase her voice from my heart, couldn't stop craving her presence.
"Yo, Xavier. Hold up," Bast said. "I'm coming with you."
I stared at him. "No offense meant, brother, but I do not think you could keep up."
"So slow down for my big carcass."
"This is an intervention, I take it," I said.
He laughed. "Yeah, actually."
I sighed. "Say your piece, and then I will run."
It was just past dawn, my favorite time to run.
Bast only shook his head. "You need to really listen. Not just wait for me to finish talking."
I exhaled in irritation. "I do not want to listen." I kicked my foot up behind me, grabbed my toes, and stretched my quad. "I want to run."
"You can't escape how you're feeling, Xavier."
"I'm not trying to escape it, I'm trying to quiet it. I'm trying to..." I sighed. "Fine. I'm trying to escape it."
Bast laughed. "Trust me, I know." He clapped me on the back with a huge paw, and guided me back inside the darkened bar, all the stools up on the tables and bar. "Come on. Just sit and listen, okay? How often have I ever asked you to hear me out, Xavier?"
"Rarely, if ever."
"Exactly. So just give me this, okay? And try to give me the real you, not the encyclopedia-professor-robot you."
"Spock, Low calls it," I said, before I could stop myself.
Bast laughed. "Exactly. No Spock."
"I'll do my best," I said, following him back upstairs to the apartment.
He poured us both coffee, and we sat at the kitchen table, facing each other. "Okay, bud. What I have to say is pretty simple: you're being a pain in the ass, man. You're fucking up orders in the kitchen, you're snapping at everyone, you're damn near killing yourself physically, and it's clear you're not eating or sleeping. I clearly have no fuckin' idea what happened between you and that actress chick, but you need to find a way past it. Because this shit has got to stop."
I stared at him, disbelieving. "Wow. That's...spectacularly helpful."
"I wasn't trying to be helpful. I was trying to say what I had to say, for the sake of all of us that gotta live and work with you."
"I thought you were going to come to me with some kind of sage, brotherly advice."
"I'd have to know the situation to do that," he said, and sipped coffee, eyeing me across the rim. "All I know is, you had some sort of a thing with Harlow Grace, but you didn't know it was her, and now she's gone, and you're a fuckin' disaster. And, oh yeah, she mentioned that you're fuckin' autistic or some shit, but you never told any of us? The fuck is that about?"
"You are upset."
"I'm your big brother. I damn near raised you by my fuckin' self. So yeah, I'm upset you didn't bother sharing that little piece of information about yourself." He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "But then, you're a Badd. We're not exactly known for our tendency to share personal shit with each other."
"It never seemed to matter," I said.
Bast slammed his mug down so hard coffee sloshed out over his hand. "Bullshit."
I blinked at his anger. "Excuse me?"
"That's bullshit! You're my baby brother. How the fuck you think that doesn't matter?" He wiped at his hand, wincing. "How long have you known?"
"I began suspecting my junior year. I spent the summer between my junior and senior year researching and self-examining for markers and symptoms, and I was one hundred percent convinced by the end of the summer."
"A doctor officially diagnose this?"
"No. But there's no need. I am as certain as medical knowledge will allow." I quirked an eyebrow at him. "Have you ever known me to be in error when I claim to know something with certainty?"
He sighed. "No, I guess not." He shook out his hand. "Fuckin' burned my hand, goddammit."
"That's what you get for outbursts of anger."
"Shut up, dork." He grimaced again, and then seemed to dismiss the pain, returning to sipping his coffee. "What's it mean, then? This autism thing."
I spent the next half hour explaining what I knew about myself and about the disorder, the effects and ramifications, how I displayed it, everything.
He was quiet a long time, thinking. "So, there's no cure or anything?"
I actually laughed. "It's a disorder, Sebastian, not a disease. I am different, not sick."
"Right, sorry." Another long silence. He finished his coffee and poured more. "So..." Bast started, hesitated, and started over. "Would it be weird if I said it's hard for me to feel like this changes how I see you?"
"I hope it does not. I'm still just...me. The same as I've always been. Nothing is changed. You merely have a term now which encapsulates what makes me different from most people."
I finally remembered my coffee, but it was cold; I dumped it out, poured fresh, and made a new pot. When I sat down again, I could tell Bast had things to say.
"What happened with you and Harlow?" he asked.
I sighed. "A lo
He laughed. "Oddly, I think I get that. Care to elaborate?"
"No. Not really."
He frowned. "Come on, Xavier. You never talk about yourself. And in this case, I think you really need to get this shit out. I know I'm not as smart as you, but I may actually have some sage brotherly wisdom to impart. I've been through some shit myself, you know."
"I wouldn't even know where to begin."
"Why are you being such a dick? Start there."
"Well, by all means, don't mince words, Sebastian," I laughed. Sobering, I sighed, scrubbing both hands through my hair. "It's...everything."
"Helpful."
I sipped coffee for a moment, trying to find the words. "I seriously don't know where to start. Discussing emotional issues is...very hard for me."
"How do you feel about her?"
I shook my head. "That's not a great place to start."
Bast laughed, a sarcastic snort. "Dude, you're being so difficult right now." He leaned back in his chair, hand curled around his mug, resting the bottom of it on his chest. "How about this--the day you came running back here half-naked, carrying your clothes, freaking the fuck out...what happened?"
I took a long drink of my coffee, tuning out my innate dislike of talking about myself, instead focusing on making sense of that day. "I suppose what you'd have to understand first, in order for that day to make sense to you, is that my relationship with Low was, from the very start...unlike any other interaction I've ever had with another person. I've never felt anyone to be as...interested, I suppose, in me. I don't mean that as an indictment of you or any of the guys, but you're my brothers. I've never had friends, not really. I've never trusted anyone enough to allow them close enough to develop a friendship, and I wouldn't know what to do in a friendship anyway.
"All the people I went to school with were...well...I loathed the large majority of them, and the rest simply didn't register on my radar. So when I met Low--which happened by accident, by the way--from the very start she just seemed fascinated by me. Curious. Interested. And all of that felt very nonjudgmental. Which was totally new to me, considering the way most people treat me, given my predilection for highfalutin syntax and verbal formality, and my tendency to wax eloquent on any number of topics. I suppose I've always just assumed everyone is judging me, because I always feel judged."
"That's not fair to a lot of the people who meet you, though, bro," Bast said. "Not everyone is judging you."
I shrugged. "I know that logically, but try telling that to my emotional experience."
"Fair enough." He rolled a finger. "So, she was interested in you."
"At first, I wondered if she was interested in me merely as...a curiosity, you know? But she kept looking at me in odd ways, and trying to sit close to me, and touching me."
Bast's eyes rose. "And you let her get away with that?"
I nodded. "I still have no idea why, but yes. There's something unique about my physical and neurological reaction to Low touching me. And I mean any kind of touch, not just...you know."
"No, I don't know."
"I mean innocent, platonic, friendly physical contact, not sexual touch."
Bast covered a grin behind his coffee. "I see," he muttered, into the mug.
"If you make me feel embarrassed by the things I'm saying, I'll stop talking," I warned.
He held up a hand palm out. "Not my intent, bud. But this is new territory for me, hearing this outta you."
"Trust me, it's new for me, too." I gathered my train of thought. "So, she would sit close to me, which by itself is hard for me. But as much as it felt weird and uncomfortable and made me anxious to have her that close, there was another part of me that liked it. I deeply, desperately enjoyed the way it felt to sit next to her, even if it was just her leg only sort of brushing mine, or her hip, or whatever. It...excited me."
"I know that feeling," Bast said. "Like...you love how it feels, and it's exciting and exhilarating, but you're also scared of how it makes you feel, and scared she'll realize all of a sudden what she's doing and stop doing it."
"Exactly," I said. "I also am very untrusting of women."
"Why?"
I sighed. "That is a long story, one which I do not have the emotional wherewithal to share at this time." I sipped coffee, continued. "Suffice to say, I experienced the cheerfully vicious cruelty of high school students at the hands of the most popular girl in the school, in such a horrifically embarrassing manner as to scar me for life and turn me against all women."
Bast blinked. "Dude. The fuck did she do to you?"
I groaned. "Short version--she tricked me into thinking she liked me, lured me to her house, and then secretly live-streamed to the entire the school as she tricked me into admitting to having a crush on her, and then caused me to...er...prematurely ejaculate into my pants. Which, I emphasize, she live-streamed to the entire school. After which she mocked me in the most cruel way possible, making it brutally obvious how pathetic she found me."
Bast growled. "That fuckin' bitch."
"Yes, well, I was naive."
"No excuse. Even less excuse, if anything."
"Thus the reason I don't trust women. That was my one experience with a girl telling me she liked me, and it was a sick, cruel joke."
"Yeah, I don't blame you."
"So, when Low demonstrated interest, it was difficult--meaning, nearly impossible--to believe her. To trust her. To feel as if she was being genuine."
"She give you any hint that she wasn't genuine?"
I shook my head. "No. And I knew that logically. But emotionally, I was too scared. To distrusting. And plus, the closer we became as friends, the more she pushed our friendship into a more physically...affectionate, shall we say, sort of realm, the more uncomfortable I became. I just...I wanted to be able to enjoy the touch of a woman who seemed to genuinely like me--and not just any woman, but the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, let alone met or spent time with. And at that time, I had no clue she was famous. All I knew was that she was clearly wealthy, and so beautiful it was hard to breathe or think around her."
Bast shook his head, chuckling. "Fuckin' hell, man, I do not blame you there. And listen, my wife is the absolute center of my universe, okay? Just so we're clear--I love her with every single goddamn molecule inside me, and there's no one in the world who can compare to her in my eyes. But...Harlow Grace? Man, that woman is fine...as...fuck."
"Indeed she is," I said. "So, yeah. She overwhelmed me. Being interested in me, wanting to spend time with me, touching me, overwhelmed me. And then I told her the story of what happened with Brittany, and that sort of led into...um...it's hard to remember exactly how it happened. I told the story to her, and then she was upset about it, and upset that I didn't trust her. She said she liked me, that she was interested in me, and somehow that led to her...flirting with me, I suppose. Speaking in a low voice, getting very much inside my personal space, up very close, putting her hands on my shoulders and chest and stomach."
"She wanted you, man," Bast said.
"I wanted to believe exactly that. But I never know what a person's true intent is by their body language. Sometimes I think they mean one thing, and they really mean another. I often misread social situations, and take what people say literally--you know this about me."
"Yeah."
"So when the most beautiful woman in the world--to me, and perhaps literally, now that I know she's famous--seemed interested in me and was flirting with me, and when my one experience with a woman turned out to be a cruel prank...I doubted my own interpretation of her intent. But she made it clear to me that she meant it. That she was attracted to me."
"And how did you feel about that?"
"Disbelieving, but longing to believe. So attracted to her it terrified me, and this...this...need. Like...when you haven't eaten all day and you're so hungry the idea of a delicious meal makes you feel very literally mad? As in crazy mad, not angry mad. That kind of
"So you bolted?"
I shook my head. "Not immediately." I swallowed hard. "I pushed myself to trust her. To...go with the situation, to trust what she was saying and allow what she was doing."
"Which was?"
"Touching me, and encouraging me to touch her in return."
He laughed. "Dude. You had Harlow Grace throwing herself at you."
"To me, she's just...Low."
"Fair enough." He rolled his hand in a keep going gesture. "So you made out or whatever?"
"Or whatever," I said, blushing.
His eyebrows shot up. "Like, you messed around?" He leaned forward. "Look, I'm only asking because I feel like you really need to talk this out, okay? And you know you can trust me, right? Like, this'll stay between you and me."
"And Dru, I imagine," I said.
Bast tilted his head to one side, nodding. "Yeah, probably. We tell each other everything."
I closed my eyes, reciting pi in my head and breathing through the anxiety and doubt, trying to quiet the frantic assault of thoughts and emotions.
"I believe you might say that Low seduced me." I hesitated. "But not in a manipulative, malicious sense. More that she somehow drew me out of my nerves and fears and doubts and encouraged me both verbally and nonverbally to act on my desires and urges. We...we kissed. Clothes came off. She...touched me. She let me touch her. And...touching, and being touched, and enjoying it? That was utterly magical, Sebastian. Like nothing else I've ever experienced in my life. For a few moments, I forgot about being...me--I forgot about being different. I was able to get out of my head and just live in my body, just experience physical sensation for what it was. She showed me how to make her feel good, and allowed me to explore her body and her beauty, she allowed me to explore what it was like and what it meant to touch a woman, to know her body in an intimate sense."
I paused, remembering, delving into visual memory of Low, naked, her breasts in my hands and her core against my mouth, her moans of pleasure and screams of release, her voice begging me not to stop, lost in the rapture of my attention.
"And then..." I hesitated again, continued falteringly. "I...she began touching me. Showing me what she enjoyed about my body. Showing me how she wanted to make me feel good in return. Being touched, for me, in any capacity, feels somewhat like...an electric tingle or shock. I'm struggling to find an appropriate metaphor...if my body is a campfire, someone touching me at all, for a handshake or a hug or an accidental contact, it's like tossing a piece of paper on the fire--a brief but intense flare-up. The way Low was touching me? Sexually? It was...her touch to my most intimate, sensitive places was like...like pouring the highest octane rocket fuel on the fire."