Chapter 11: The Aftermath
The sun was well up by the time Jason stirred the next morning, coming out of an unpleasant dream he immediately forgot. Cathy, her faced turned away toward the wall, was still breathing steadily, fast asleep. He watched the easy rise and fall of her shoulders. That was Cathy. Nothing bothered her. She wasn't quite snoring, but there was a faint buzz to the tail-end of her exhale that probably would develop into the sound of a snore, eventually. Whoever was lucky enough to marry her would have to put up with it. A smile price to pay, he told himself.
He resisted the impulse to kiss her shoulder. He let her sleep. No matter how blasé she acted, last night had been a lot for her. Cathy liked a little flutter of adventure now and then, certainly. But it took a lot out of her. And last night had been more than a little adventure. How long had then been in the trunk of their car? Jason had been pretty sure they were going to die. Well, he had wondered, anyway. Once or twice, he had wondered if they might.
Rather than ruminate more on it, he slipped out of bed and into the bathroom before getting dressed. He didn't feel like breakfast. There were things to take care of.
Namely, the car.
So while Cathy slept, he ordered a cab on his phone on one of those apps. It came right away, while she was still not-snoring, and he rode in silence in the back of a bland sedan to a gas station, where the driver waited while he purchased a three-gallon gas can and filled it up.
"We had some car trouble," he explained. Not that he needed to. The driver barely spoke any English, and he was getting paid per destination, and Jason promised him a tip, though that wasn't really how these things worked, he was pretty sure. The whole thing only took forty minutes, getting picked up, and filling up the gas can, and getting dropped off. The car was still sitting where they left it, with a bright, crisp parking ticket still tucked under the windshield wiper, for nearly $75.
He filled up the rest of the tank on the way home, and was only glad to have the keys and the car back all in one piece. It could have gone a lot differently. They could have kept the keys, or even the car. But Jason supposed that would have been a crime of a different scale, and easier to report--getting stranded naked and smelling of beer and piss was hard to explain in any circumstances, but grand theft auto was probably something that would show up on the paperwork with fewer chuckles. Carrey and his friends were real assholes, but they had been smart about the whole thing from the start. No one would believe a tall tale about kidnapping and assault that ended up back at home with no injuries.
Getting the car back home without incident or complication was such a relief that he was almost surprised to see Cathy there, sitting at the couch. She was waiting for him.
"I got the car back," he explained.
"You could have told me where you went though," Cathy said. "I was worried."
"I didn't want to wake you."
It took her twenty minutes of passive-aggressive arguing to admit it, but she had assumed--quite wrongly--that he was mad at her about last night, and that he blamed her for everything that had gone wrong. She blushed when she finally said out loud the parts she was thinking about. "Sucking off that security guy," she said. "I panicked. I didn't want the cops involved. And then it all just seemed to spiral out of control from there, you know? And maybe calling Evan was a mistake. And then, I don't know, looking for our stuff in the trash, when it was all right here?"
"There's no way you could have known that, though," Jason said.
The dumpster diving was the least bothersome part of the whole sordid evening. Now that she brought it up, watching Cathy blow a stranger in the theater's back room had not been as totally humiliating as he thought it could have been; watching him paint her face with semen had been a shock, but a good shock. The kind of shock that made him hard with excitement. Like watching his girlfriend star in a porno. He didn't say that out loud to her, not while she was wringing her hands with guilt. She wasn't ready to hear it.
There was one thing she was ready for, thought.
"Take off your pants," she said.
He did.
Cathy did the thing she had bragged to Evan about doing. Jason had heard every word of their argument in the truck. And it was true. He did have a micropenis, and it was a medical condition, and the silver lining of it all meant that she could fit his entire package and all its parts in her mouth, all at once, without any complication or extra effort. It was something she had discovered during their early foreplay, and now it was one of her go-to moves in bed: she would start at his scrotum with her tongue until he was stiff, and then suck on him like a ring pop until he exploded in her mouth. And he was getting better about lasting longer and longer now, too. He lasted nearly fifteen minutes, this time, and when she was done, she looked up at him and grinned.
"You were such a good date last night," she said. "Very understanding."
"I was going to say something similar about you," he added. "You were pretty quick on your feet. I'm glad it all worked out."
She was placating him. She felt guilty, he realized. She was worried she had gone too far, and done too much. Jason didn't feel that way. Not at all.
By dinner time that evening he had paid off their parking ticket online; it wasn't anymore hassle than a few online clicks; he also made a phone call to a locksmith, and booked an appointment to get the locks changed. He didn't expect any more trouble from Carry, or David, or Drew--there was no sign they had done anything more than drop their ruined things in a heap on the couch; nothing was out of place or missing, nothing was tampered with. And the key was where he had expected it to be. But he wasn't going to take any extra chances. He took the first non-emergency opening on Friday.
Getting things done felt like an accomplishment after the fact of yesterday's unusual events, a reassertion of order over the chaotic filth of the night before. But Cathy’s silence became a palpable, humming thing.
She brooded.
She moved from the couch to the kitchen window, then back again, her fingers absently following the rim of her coffee mug without ever lifting it to her mouth. Her eyes kept finding him, then darting away, filled with words she couldn't quite say. The confident woman from the theater had retreated, folded back into the nervous, plain girl who worried about every ripple she caused.
“That couple in front of us,” she finally said. You saw them see.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Was that okay? Or was it too much, just getting them out like that in public?”
Jason set his phone down. He understood her rituals. The event was never truly over for her until she had picked it apart, each fragment examined and absolved.
"They were into it," he told her. "More than into it."
She nodded slowly, absorbing this, but her brow remained furrowed. “And later, with that security guard… he was so gross. Sweaty and fat. I panicked. Did I look… Was it still sexy? Even with him?”
Jason nodded. It was hard not to grin. But he kept his face serious. The man had painted her face white.
"It was sexy as fuck, Cathy."
Cathy had to revist the whole evening. Well, the whole evening as she remembered it, the parts that stood out in her memory--Carrey getting out his big dick in the theater, and sucking of the security guard. That kept coming back up. "You know I haven't sucked that many guys, Jason," she said, more than once. "That was a big leap."
Jason listened to all of it, and reassured her every step of the way. No, he wasn't mad that she called Evan That had been a good idea. No, he wasn't mad that she had convinced Evan to drive them back to the dumpsters. That had been good thinking. No, he wasn't mad about the dumpster diving. No, he wasn't mad that Evan had slapped her ass a little on the way out of the car--just a little surprised. And no, he wasn't mad that she drank a little. He wasn't mad. He really wasn't. He was just glad she was taking everything in stride. She was an impressive woman. Other women would not be taking the evening so well. Jason told her so.
They ordered pizza for dinner, eating off paper plates on the couch while a movie played, half-ignored. She kept talking, picking at her crust, her knee bouncing, her fingers twisting a napkin into damp confetti. He watched her fidgeting as she talked all through dinner, and realized from the flush in her cheek and the bounce in her limbs that she was more than agitated. She was aroused, and needed to come.
Jason paused the TV.
"Lets go the bedroom," he suggested. "There's something I would like to do to you."
She actually did bite her lower lip a little as she looked up at him. "Okay," she agreed immediately. "But will you do something first?"
He stood. "What?"
Cathy blushed. "I want you to pee on me."