Chapter 6: Drinks
The Gilded Anchor was all polished dark wood and dim, golden light, the air thick with the smell of fried food and expensive bourbon. Mark sat at the end of a high-top table, a sweating beer bottle clutched in his hand. He’d managed, through a mumbled conversation at the water cooler, to snag the vague invite. He wasn’t part of the group, not really. He was scenery.
Derek was the sun around which everything orbited. He held court, his laugh too loud, his gestures expansive. He’d commandeered the stool next to Lacy an hour ago, and hadn’t moved since.
Lacy was playing her part perfectly. She sipped a cocktail, her laughter a bright, tinkling sound that cut through the murmur of the bar. She’d lean forward to listen to a story, giving Derek and the others a generous view down her blouse, then would sit back and flutter her lashes, occasionally casting a “helpless” glance toward Mark. A secret signal. Their secret. It made his stomach twist and his blood heat in equal measure.
“Another round,” Derek announced, slapping the table. “Carl, let's go grab ’em. Lacy, sweetheart, you’re dying of thirst, I can tell.”
“I’m okay, really,” she said, her voice sweet.
“Nonsense.” Derek’s hand, large and possessive, landed on the small of her back. Mark saw her tense for a microsecond, then relax into the touch with a soft smile. “Come on, help me pick. First though lets slip into back hallway it's quiet, we can actually hear ourselves think.”
Carl, a bulky guy from Compliance, stood up, already swaying slightly. “Good call. This place is a zoo.”
Lacy looked at Mark. Her wide blue eyes were imploring, but not for rescue. They were asking for permission. Remembering their tangled sheets, her whispered proposal, Mark gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. His knuckles were white on the bottle.
“Alright,” Lacy said, her voice light. “Just for a minute. I should probably head home soon.”
Derek’s smirk was triumphant. He guided her off the stool, his hand staying on her back, steering her through the crowd toward a dim archway marked ‘Restrooms & Exit.’ Carl lumbered after them. Mark watched the three of them disappear, the noise of the bar seeming to swell and then recede into a dull roar in his ears.
He took a long, bitter pull of his beer.
The two other guys at the table, Tim and Raj, were already snickering. “Damn, Derek works fast,” Tim said, shaking his head with a grin.
“No kidding,” Raj replied. “He’s been talking about her since her first day. Said he had intel.”
Mark forced himself to speak. “Intel?”
Tim leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial tone. “Yeah, man. Some video from a party a few years back. Some Sigma Chi bash. Derek showed us on his phone before you got here. Crazy stuff.”
The bottom of Mark’s world dissolved. The sticky bar top, the neon sign glowing behind the bottles, the laughter around him—all of it warped, rushing away down a long, dark tunnel. “Video?” The word was ash in his mouth.
“Oh, shit, you haven’t seen it?” Raj said, misinterpreting Mark’s horror for curiosity. He fumbled for his own phone. “Derek air-dropped it. It’s, like, thirty seconds. It is a little grainy, but damn. That girl can really suck dick."
Raj’s thumb slid across his phone screen, the glare cutting through the hazy bar light. He turned the device, the small rectangle like an open wound offering itself to Mark. "Check it out. It’s legit."
Mark’s hand moved as if through deep water, taking the phone. The cool glass felt like a shard of ice against his palm. He looked down.
The video was vertical, shaky, lit by the harsh flash of a smartphone years ago. The sound was a roar of generic party bass and overlapping, slurring voices. The floor was sticky-looking linoleum, littered with red solo cups. And there she was.
College-aged Lacy, her hair even longer then, fell in a bright blonde curtain as she knelt. She was wearing a tight, cheap tank top, her cleavage pronounced. She looked up at someone off-camera, her face a perfect mask of bubbly, ditzy enthusiasm, and giggled. It was her laugh, but sharper, hungrier. Then she leaned forward.
The angle captured everything. The man was huge, thick and veined, and her small hands couldn't fully encircle him. She didn't seem intimidated. She nuzzled, then opened her mouth, her lips stretching into a wide, practiced O as she took the head of the massive cock inside. Her eyes, those wide blue eyes, fluttered closed in what looked like genuine bliss before the video jerked and ended, freezing on a blurred image of her blonde head bobbing forward.
Mark didn't breathe. The noise of The Gilded Anchor—the clinking glasses, the shriek of laughter from a nearby booth, Tim saying "See? Told you"—filleted into a distorted, meaningless buzz. The image on the phone screen burned itself onto the back of his eyelids. That giggle. The eager, expert drop of her head. His virgin fiancée.
He handed the phone back, his movements mechanical. The bottle of beer was still in his other hand. He set it down very carefully on the wood, afraid his fingers would crush the glass.
"Wild, right?" Raj said, taking the phone and grinning.
“Wild, right?” Raj said, taking the phone and grinning. He swiped the screen, his thumb a blur. “Derek had a couple others, too. From the same party, I think. This one’s the money shot, though. You can see her face clear as day.”
Mark’s mouth was full of cotton. He managed a stiff, nearly imperceptible nod.
“But there’s this other one,” Raj continued, leaning in, his voice dropping to a confidential murmur. Tim leaned closer too, drawn in by the gossip. “The audio’s crap, but you can kinda hear her. She’s, like, tugging on some guy’s arm. Basically begging to suck his cock. Going on about how much she loves it, how it’s her favorite thing.”
Tim snorted. “No shame. A real slut.”
“Describing it and everything,” Raj confirmed, chuckling and shaking his head as he finally pocketed his phone. The gesture was so casual, so final. It sealed the video’s truth. “Like, graphically, man. Derek's buddy Steve, you know the guy who sent him the videos said she had a real… technique.”
The words hung in the air, toxic and final. A real technique. Mark felt the beer in his stomach curdle, a sour heat rising in his throat. The dim bar light seemed to strobe, flashing between the present and the grainy, blurring past still branded behind his eyes.
He couldn’t feel his fingers. The phantom sensation of her giggle, that specific, bubbly sound he loved, was now spliced with the image of her stretching her lips. His Lacy. His virgin.
“Another beer, Mark?” Tim asked, already signaling the waitress.
Mark shook his head. The motion was stiff, robotic. “Bathroom,” he managed to croak, pushing his stool back. The legs screeched against the floor, a sound that seemed to come from far away.
He walked, his legs carrying him on autopilot away from their table, away from their knowing glances. He didn’t turn toward the restrooms. He moved toward the dim archway where he’d watched her disappear, pulled along by a terrible, magnetic gravity.
The noise of the bar faded into a dull thump of bass as he entered the short, poorly lit hallway. It smelled of stale beer and industrial cleaner. Two doors stood on the left: ‘Men’ and ‘Women’. At the end, an emergency exit sign glowed a sickly red above a metal door, propped slightly open with a wooden wedge. A sliver of cold night air sliced through.
From just beyond that door, in the shadows of the back alley, he heard voices. Derek’s, low and insistent. Carl’s, a gruff murmur. And then hers. Lacy’s.
“...just so pushy, Derek,” she was saying, her tone a perfect blend of playful scolding and invitation. It was the voice she used when she was negotiating, when she was winning. “What would your girlfriend think?”
“She doesn’t have to know a thing,” Derek replied, a smile in his voice. “Besides, Steve wasn’t lying, was he? He said you were the most enthusiastic girl at Zeta Pi. Said you had a... real gift.”
There was a beat of silence. Mark stopped breathing, pressing himself against the cold cinderblock wall just inside the interior door.
When Lacy spoke again, her voice was closer, a hushed, confidential whisper that carried on the still air. “Steve talks too much.”
“Prove he’s wrong, then,” Derek goaded, a challenge.
Another pause. Then, the sound that unstitched Mark completely: her soft, breathy laugh. It wasn’t the nervous giggle she’d practiced with him. This was lower, authentic, charged with a dark excitement he’d never heard. “Maybe I don’t want to prove he’s wrong.”
Carl let out a low, appreciative chuckle. “Fuck.”
Mark’s hand found the edge of the metal door. He didn’t push it. He stood frozen, a spectator to his own ruin. The alley air was crisp, smelling of garbage and damp concrete.
He heard the shuffle of feet, the rustle of clothing. A zipper, distinct and metallic, being dragged down.
“Go on, then,” Derek said, his voice thick now. “Show us what he was talking about.”
Mark squeezed his eyes shut, but it only made the video play more clearly behind his lids. The eager drop of her head. The bliss on her face. His fiancée.
From the alley, there was no playful negotiation left, no act. Just a wet, muffled sound, followed by Derek’s sharp, gratified sigh. “Jesus. He wasn’t lying.”
A second zipper followed. Carl’s.
“There’s plenty to go around, sweetheart,” Carl grunted.
Lacy didn’t speak. The only sounds were the slick, rhythmic, and hungry silence of her work, punctuated by the men’s ragged breathing. Mark slid down the wall until he was sitting on the sticky floor, the cold from the concrete seeping through his jeans. He put his head in his hands, the noise from the bar a distant carnival, the truth in the alley a devouring quiet.
The devouring quiet from the alley was not quiet at all. It was a symphony of obscene, wet sounds. Mark listened, each one a puncture in the fantasy he’d built with her. A low, gagging choke, then a slurping inhale. Derek’s voice, strained. “Fuck, just like that. Take it all, you hungry little bitch.”
“My turn,” Carl grunted.
A slick pop, then the same mouth, his Lacy’s mouth, enveloping another cock. The rhythm was faster now, desperate. She wasn’t just selling a story. The raw, greedy sounds told him she was feasting.
Mark’s stomach lurched. He stood up, his legs trembling. He didn’t look into the alley. He already had the image, seared into him from Raj’s phone, now animated by sound. He turned and walked back into the bar, his body moving on a programmed directive. The noise and light hit him like a physical wall.
He found Raj and Tim still at the table, now joined by a couple of others. They were laughing about a client. Mark stood there, a ghost at the feast. Raj looked up, his smile fading slightly at Mark’s expression.
“You alright, man? You look pale.”
Mark’s voice, when it came, was flat and dry, stripped of all inflection. “The videos Derek sent you. Can you air-drop them to me?”
The table went quiet for a beat. Tim’s eyebrows shot up. Raj studied Mark’s face, looking for a sign of the turned-on fiancé, the willing cuckold. He saw only a stark, hollowed-out blankness.
“Uh, sure. Yeah, man. Of course.” Raj fumbled for his phone, his thumbs moving quickly. “Sending them now. There’s three. The one I showed you, and two others.”
A notification chimed on Mark’s phone in his pocket. The sound was obscenely cheerful. He gave a single, stiff nod. “Thanks.”
He didn’t sit back down. He just stood there, anchored to the spot, listening to the final, ragged groans from a hallway that still seemed to echo in his skull. A slammed car door outside, an engine starting. It was over.
A moment later, the metal door to the hallway swung open. Lacy emerged, followed by Derek and Carl. Her blonde hair was slightly disheveled, a strand stuck to her flushed cheek. She smoothed her skirt with both hands, a quick, practiced motion. Her lipstick was gone. Derek’s hand gave her ass a possessive, final squeeze as they rejoined the group. She didn’t flinch. She smiled, a bit breathlessly.
“The line for the ladies’ room was crazy,” she announced, her voice a bright, convincing lie. She subtly looked at Mark, her wide blue eyes searching his for the compliance, the shared secret, the arousal she expected to find there was there albeit hidden beneath a layer of guilt.
“Well,” Mark said, his voice thankfully even, just a touch weary. He pushed back from the table, the stool legs scraping. “This has been a blast, but I should probably get out of here. Big pile of paperwork waiting for me at home.”
He shrugged into his jacket, avoiding the stickiness on the sleeve. Tim gave a half-wave. “Late night crunch? Brutal.”
“The usual,” Mark said, forcing a tight smile. He didn’t look at Lacy, but he felt her attention like a laser on the side of his face. He was giving her the script, the escape hatch they’d technically planned for. “You guys have fun. Don’t let Derek expense all those rounds.”
Derek laughed, clapping a heavy hand on Lacy’s shoulder. “This one’s worth every penny.”
Mark’s jaw clenched. He finally glanced at Lacy. Her expression was perfect: slightly disappointed at the early departure of a mild acquaintance, politely concerned. “Don’t work too hard,” she said, her tone sweet, vacant. A ditzy co-worker.
“I’ll try not to.” He turned and walked out, the bar’s noise peeling away from him layer by layer until he was on the cold sidewalk. The night air was a shock. He leaned against a brick wall, the vibrations from the bass inside thrumming through his back. He pictured her making her own excuses in five minutes, ten. She’d be breezy, apologetic. I’m so tired, you guys! That last cocktail did me in! They’d let her go. The performance was complete.
He took out his phone. The screen glared in the dark. Three video files, sent from Raj, sat in his downloads. He didn’t open them. He just watched the icon, a small, silent bomb. A taxi splashed through a puddle, its yellow light cutting the gloom. He should hail it. Go home. Wait for her.
Streetlights bled color onto the wet sidewalk. He opened the rideshare app, thumb clumsily tapping the screen. A car was nearby, three minutes away.
The Uber arrived, a nondescript gray Corolla. Mark slid into the back, muttering his address. The driver nodded, turning up a talk radio segment about sports.
As they pulled away, the bar’s facade shrunk in the rear window. He watched it disappear, that entire world of laughter and betrayal receding into the city’s grid. His phone felt heavy, loaded with the proof of her hunger.
The city streamed by, a blur of lit windows and darkened doors. He leaned his head back, the upholstery smelling of artificial citrus. The driver whistled along to the radio, oblivious.
His thumb hovered over the video files from Raj. He didn’t open them. He just stared at the icons, three tiny vaults of ruin. The car hit a pothole, jolting him.
“Rough night?” the driver asked, glancing in the mirror.
“Something like that,” Mark said, his voice flat.
They turned onto his street. The familiar rows of brownstones offered no comfort. His apartment building loomed, their bedroom window dark now—he’d left the light on, but it was off. She was already here, or she wasn’t.
The Uber stopped at the curb. Mark got out, the door shutting with a solid thunk. The car pulled away, taillights fading into the night.