Chapter 8: The Walk of Shame
The donut bag crinkled in Cody’s hand, a mundane sound that felt violently out of place. His arm was a warm, heavy weight across her shoulders, his stride easy and familiar. Emily’s own movements were careful, calibrated, each step a conscious negotiation with the insistent, jeweled presence inside her.
“So, the Lich King, huh?” Cody said, his breath making little clouds in the chilly air. “Did you guys win?”
“Not exactly,” Emily managed, her voice tight. A slight misstep on a cracked section of pavement made her hips tilt. The plug shifted, a tiny, internal adjustment that sparked a wave of heat up her spine. She bit down on the inside of her cheek.
“Bummer. But hey, still fun, right? Hanging with Sarah and the guys.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You’ve been getting really into it. It’s cool to see you so… passionate.”
Passionate. The word landed with a twisted irony. If he only knew. The cool night air did nothing to soothe the fever she felt under her skin. Every point of contact—his arm, the brush of his jacket against her side—felt magnified, a contrast to the secret she carried.
“Yeah,” she breathed. “It’s… immersive.”
They reached the weeping willow, its bare branches casting skeletal shadows under the streetlamp. The forgotten chairs looked like silent observers. As they passed, Cody’s foot caught on an uneven slab of concrete.
He stumbled, just slightly.
His grip on her tightened reflexively, his other hand flying to her waist to steady them both. The motion was instinctive, strong. His fingers splayed against the denim of her jeans, right at the hip, and as he pulled her back upright, he pressed her firmly into his side.
The pressure was direct, unequivocal. The rounded end of the plug was driven a fraction deeper, a perfect, shocking alignment.
A sharp, punched-out gasp escaped Emily’s lips before she could cage it. Her whole body went rigid, a wire pulled taut. The sensation was less about pleasure and more about overwhelming, absolute exposure. It flooded her system, short-circuiting thought.
Cody froze. “Whoa, you okay? Did I hurt you?”
He loosened his hold, turning to face her, his hands still on her hips. His brows were knit with concern in the lamplight.
“No,” she said, too quickly. The word was airless. “No, you just… surprised me. I’m fine.” She forced a smile, hoping it didn’t look as unraveled as she felt. “Clumsy, huh?”
“My bad,” he said, but his eyes searched her face. That familiar, affectionate curiosity was there, but it was shading into something else—a flicker of perception. She saw his gaze drop to her mouth, then back to her eyes. She knew that look. It was the look he got when he was puzzling her out, when he sensed a shift in her mood he couldn’t name.
“You sure?” he asked, his voice softer. “You seem… different.”
“It’s just the game,” she said, falling back on the easy excuse. “It gets in your head. Makes everything feel a little more… intense.” That, at least, was true.
He nodded slowly, accepting it, but his hands didn’t move from her hips. The casual embrace had morphed into something more deliberate. The normalcy of the moment was gone, replaced by a charged silence broken only by the distant laugh from the library patio.
“Intense how?” he asked.
The question hung between them. She could give him the vanilla version—the drama of the narrative, the fear of a character dying. Or she could tip a fraction of the truth into the open, a test flight for the chaos whirring inside her.
“Like… your senses are all turned up,” she said, choosing her words like stepping stones across a river. “Everything’s louder, brighter. You make decisions you wouldn’t normally make. You feel things you…” She trailed off, her courage wavering.
“You feel things you what?” he prompted, his thumbs making absent, tiny circles on the denim.
You feel things you can’t escape, she thought. You become a vessel for a sensation, and it owns you. She looked at him, at his open, waiting face, and a wild impulse took hold.
“Come upstairs,” she said, the request leaving her before she could judge it.
His eyebrows raised. “It’s late. You said you were wiped.”
“I am,” she said. “But I don’t want to be alone with it yet. The game. The feeling.” She took a shaky breath. “Just for a bit.”
He studied her for another long moment, then a slow, understanding smile touched his lips. “Okay,” he said. “Just for a bit.”
The walk to her dorm room was an eternity. Every step echoed the one that had almost undone her. She was hyper-aware of him half a pace behind her, of the keycard’s scrape in the lock, of the institutional hum of the hallway lights.
Her room was as she’d left it that afternoon—neat, generic, a temporary capsule. The juxtaposition was almost funny: the bland dorm decor against the filth of her reality. She dropped her bag by the door, the motion causing another low pulse inside her. She winced.
“You really are tense,” Cody said, closing the door softly behind him. He set the donuts on her desk. “Was it a bad session? Did Mark do that thing again where he makes everything all… psychological?”
You have no idea. She sat on the edge of her bed, the springs groaning. “Something like that.”
He sat beside her, not touching, leaving a careful inch of space between them. The distance was a kind of torture. “Wanna talk about it?”
She shook her head. Talking was impossible. But silence, with this thing inside her, with him so close, was its own kind of madness. She was caught between two worlds: the sweet, straightforward boy offering donuts and comfort, and the relentless, jeweled truth anchored in her body.
“What did I miss tonight?” she asked, grasping for the mundane. “Besides the donut run.”
He launched into a story about his study group, a malfunctioning projector, his friend Dave’s disastrous attempt to make microwave nachos. It was normal. It was safe. Emily nodded, forcing laughs in the right places, while her entire consciousness was a narrow, focused beam on the internal pressure.
She laughed at the right moment in his story, the sound feeling thin and papery in her own ears. Her focus was a frayed thread, pulled taut between his voice and the low, persistent thrum inside her. The longer he talked, the more the two sensations began to warp together, his words becoming a soundtrack to her secret.
“So then Dave’s like, ‘I think the cheese is supposed to be liquid,’” Cody chuckled, shaking his head.
The mundane anecdote was a life raft she was desperately clinging to. But the pressure was changing, settling into a deep, insistent warmth that made the ordinary room feel impossibly close. She shifted on the bed, a subtle adjustment that sent a fresh wave through her.
“And the whole room smelled like burnt plastic for, like, an hour.”
“Classic Dave,” Emily murmured. Her hand found his on the comforter, lacing her fingers with his just to anchor herself. His skin was warm, real. A point of true contact amidst the internal storm. She held on too tightly.
He noticed. He always noticed the small things. His story died off, and he turned his hand over to squeeze hers back. “Hey,” he said, softer now. “You’re really not here, are you?”
“I’m trying to be.” It was the most honest thing she’d said all night.
“You don’t have to try with me.” He lifted their joined hands and kissed her knuckles, a gesture so sweet and familiar it ached. It clashed violently with the imagery Sarah had planted in her head, with the possessive weight she carried. She felt like a glitching screen, displaying two different channels at once.
The kindness in his eyes was the final trigger. It undid her, not with desire, but with a sudden, overwhelming need for solitude. She couldn’t unravel like this in front of him. The shame of it, the sheer logistical insanity of it, crashed down. She needed him to leave before the dam broke.
“I think,” she started, her voice unsteady. “I think I just need to sleep. It was a lot tonight.”
Disappointment flickered across his face, brief but genuine, before being smoothed over by concern. “Sure. Of course.” He stood, pulling her up with him. They stood close in the small space between the bed and the door.
The internal heat was a live wire. It demanded something she could not, would not, give it with him here. She placed her hands on his chest, feeling the solid beat of his heart through his shirt. He leaned in, expecting more.
Instead, she guided him. She rose onto her toes and pressed her lips to his in a kiss that was close-mouthed, brief, and deliberately final. It was a period at the end of a sentence. A soft, firm closure.
“Goodnight, Cody,” she whispered against his mouth.
He blinked, a little wrong-footed, but smiled. “Night, Em. Text me if you can’t sleep.”
The click of the door closing behind him was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. She stood frozen, back against the door, listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway. Only when the silence was absolute and unquestionable did she let her head thud against the wood, a long, slow breath escaping her.
Alone.
The word echoed in the sudden stillness. The pressure inside her was no longer a secret to be kept; it was just a fact, her own private fact. She crossed the room with purpose now, no need to calibrate her steps. From under a stack of textbooks, she pulled out the latest volume Sarah had lent her.
The cover was a swirl of dark inks and lurid neon: a heroine with wide, frightened eyes ensnared by glistening, otherworldly tendrils. The Gilded Maw. Emily kicked off her shoes, curled onto her side on the bed, and opened the book.
The art was shockingly detailed, a feast of impossible anatomy and intricate shading. The text blurred as she flipped past the establishing pages, seeking the heart of it. There. A two-page spread of intricate binding, of tender violation, of ecstasy and terror woven into the same line work.
Her free hand slid beneath the waistband of her jeans, past the zipper, finding the cool, smooth jewel nestled against her. With a deep, shivering breath, she pressed the base of the plug, rolling it just slightly. The faint internal shift was electrifying, a direct circuit to the page before her.
Here, in the quiet of her own room, she didn’t have to be Emily the girlfriend, or Emily the cautious player. She could just be a body reading a book, two forms of possession singing to each other in the dark. The mundane world of donuts and projectors was on the other side of the door, a lifetime away.