Chapter 8: Suckling in the Aftermath
The neon pulse from the living room was a weak, arrhythmic heartbeat against the bedroom wall. It painted the sweat on Mack’s back in ghostly strokes of blue and red. Lexi’s chest rose and fell beneath him, a rapid, fluttering tempo against his own hammering heart. The second round had been slower, deeper, a conscious unraveling that left them both hollowed out and raw.
He didn’t pull away. His weight settled onto her, a crushing, comfortable anchor. He turned his head where it lay on her sternum, his ear pressed to skin still thrumming with the aftershocks. His mouth, almost of its own volition, found the curve of her breast. His lips brushed the sensitive skin, then closed around her nipple. It wasn’t sexual, not anymore. It was reflexive, a seeking of comfort, a grounding in the profound and confusing warmth of her.
He suckled gently, a slow, rhythmical pull. Her hand came up and threaded through his sweat-damp hair, not guiding, just holding. A long, sighing moan vibrated through her ribcage and into his skull.
Then she chuckled. The sound was low, rich, and utterly out of place. It was Derek’s laugh, the one he used when Mack missed a lift or said something profoundly stupid. Her chest moved with it under his mouth.
“Damn, dude,” she said, the words gravelly and familiar in the dark. “Your mommy issues are showing.”
He went completely still. His lips stayed on her skin. The humid, intimate connection of his mouth to her body became a frozen tableau. The words echoed, cheap and crude, dissecting a moment that had felt frighteningly pure.
He lifted his head slowly. In the strobing neon, his eyes were dark pits, unreadable. He looked down at her face, at the smirk that was already faltering under his gaze, the Lexi performance crumbling to reveal the Derek beneath, who instantly knew he’d crossed a line.
“Maybe they are,” Mack said, his voice a dry rasp. It wasn’t defensive. It was a simple, terrifying admission. “Maybe you’re the only one who can fix ‘em.”
Before she could speak, before she could apologize or double down on the joke, he lowered his head again. This time, there was no tenderness. His mouth was hungry, demanding. He suckled harder, his teeth grazing the peak until she gasped, her back arching off the mattress. His hand slid down her trembling stomach, past the waistband of the shorts she’d pulled on, his fingers delving into the slick heat between her legs.
“Mack—” His name was a sharp fracture of sound.
“You named it,” he growled against her skin, his fingers working her with a focused, ruthless precision. “You get to deal with it.”
The laughter was gone, burned away in the sudden resurgence of heat. Her fingers clenched in his hair, pulling, but it was an anchor, not a rejection. Her gasp turned into a low, continuous moan as he drove her swiftly, efficiently, toward another climax, as if punishing them both for the vulnerability she’d named and he’d acknowledged.
After, she was boneless, staring at the ceiling as the colors swam across her vision. He withdrew his hand, wiped it absently on the sheet, and rolled off her, onto his back. The inch of space between them felt like a canyon.
“That was fucked up,” she whispered to the ceiling.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“I am, though.” She rolled onto her side, facing his profile. “It was a shitty thing to say. It’s just… the default setting. When things get too real, I go for the joke. The dickhead roommate joke. It’s armor.”
“I know what it is,” he said, still staring up. He did know. It was the same reflex that made him flex when he was nervous, or talk about reps when his feelings were a tangled mess. They both hid in their old personas. “Your armor chafes.”
She was silent for a long moment. “Yours isn’t exactly cashmere, Jackson. You hide in plain sight. You become this… monument. People see the statue and don’t look for the guy locked inside it.”
He had no rebuttal. It was true. He’d spent the last three months building the monument higher, carving the details sharper, thinking it would make him invincible to whatever this was. It just made him lonelier.
“The grocery store,” he said, changing the subject because the other path felt like quicksand.
“What about it?”
“We’re going. Tomorrow. Today, I guess.” He glanced at the clock. 3:17 AM. “Later.”
“And?”
“And we’re going to be weird. It’s gonna happen. I might get the constipated look. You might do the voice. Someone might stare. We’ll deal with it.”
She propped her head on her hand. “That’s your big plan? ‘We’ll deal with it’?”
“That’s the whole plan, Lexi. For everything.” He finally turned to look at her. “We deal with it. One shitty, awkward, fucking confusing moment at a time. That’s the practice.”
A slow, real smile touched her lips, faint in the gloom. No performance. It was small, tired, and real. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
They slept, fitfully, the space between them gradually dissolving as they drifted off, until her foot was hooked over his ankle, a point of contact.
The fluorescent lights of the FreshMart were a brutal, buzzing assault. Mack pushed a cart with a wobbly wheel, feeling massively, ridiculously out of place. He was in a tight black t-shirt and gym shorts, his body drawing glances of appreciation or intimidation. Lexi walked beside him in sleek athleisure wear, her hair in a perfect high ponytail, oversized sunglasses perched on her head. She looked like a celebrity incognito. He looked like her security detail who’d forgotten his job.
They were in the snack aisle. The practice was immediately failing.
“You cannot be serious,” Lexi said, her voice hushed but vehement. She held up a bag of generic cheese puffs. “This isn’t food.
"This isn’t food. It’s fluorescent orange sawdust in a crinkly bag. It’s an insult to cheese, and to puffs.” She tossed it back on the shelf with a dismissive flick of her wrist.
Mack grabbed the bag again, his thumb punching through the thin plastic near the seam. “It’s ninety-nine cents. The name-brand is four bucks. They taste the same.”
“They objectively do not. My palate is refined.” She struck a haughty pose, one hand on her hip.
“Your palate used to think cold pizza and warm Mountain Dew was a balanced breakfast.” He tossed the damaged bag into the cart. It was a declaration.
A woman pushing a toddler in a cart slowed as she passed. Her eyes did the thing Mack hated. They swept over Lexi with sharp, appraising curiosity, then flicked to him with a mixture of confusion and vague disapproval. The unspoken question hung in the antiseptic air: What are they?
Lexi’s performative pose stiffened. She saw the look. Mack saw her see it. Her shoulders went back, her chin lifted higher in defiance, a shield snapping into place.
“Let’s just get the fucking peanut butter,” Mack muttered, steering the wobbly cart away. The moment had cracked. His jaw was tight.
They orbited each other in silence through the condiments, the pasta sauce. The normal shit felt like a minefield. He grabbed the generic creamy. She silently placed the brand-name natural, the oil separated at the top, back in the cart. A stalemate. They didn’t speak.
Back in the apartment, the tension didn’t break. It just changed form, compressed by the familiar walls. The grocery bags sat on the counter, unpacked. The neon hum was an accusation. Lexi leaned against the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, watching him put away the beer.
“You get quiet,” she said. “When you’re pissed. You used to yell.”
“I’m not pissed.” He shoved the milk into the fridge.
“You’re something.”
He slammed the fridge door. The bottles on the door rattled. “What do you want from me? You wanted normal. Normal people get weird at the grocery store. Normal people have shitty, silent drives home. Congrats. We’re nailing it.”
“I don’t want you to be normal! I want you to be you!” Her voice cracked. “I want you to tell that lady to mind her own goddamn business. I want you to make a scene about the cheese puffs. I want the guy who doesn’t give a shit, not this… this tense statue I have to tiptoe around.”
“The guy who doesn’t give a shit died when his best friend disappeared and came back as a different person!” The words exploded out of him, raw and too loud. He gripped the edge of the counter, his knuckles white. “He’s gone. You killed him. This is what’s left. You wanted in? This is it. The fucking constipated look and the silence and the damaged grocery bags. This is your person now. Deal with it.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide. The defiance bled out of her, leaving something wounded and open. She took a step toward him, then another. She didn’t stop until she was right in front of him, inside his personal space, forcing him to look down at her.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Her hands came up and gripped the hem of his tight black shirt. She pulled it up. He didn’t help, but he didn’t resist. She dragged it over his head, his arms, and let it drop to the floor. Her palms flattened on the hard expanse of his chest, over the pounding of his heart.
“Okay,” she said again, and slid to her knees on the linoleum.
His breath caught. She looked up at him, her eyes holding his, as her fingers worked the drawstring of his gym shorts. She pulled them down, taking his boxers with them. He stepped out of the puddle of fabric, his body rigid. Her hands slid up his calves, the dense muscles of his thighs, a worshiper at the altar of the monument she’d inspired.
Then she leaned forward, her mouth finding him. He jerked, a strangled sound escaping his throat. His hand flew to her head, fingers tangling in her perfect ponytail. She took him in, deep, with a practiced, devastating expertise that made his knees buckle. He braced himself against the counter, head thrown back, seeing stars behind his eyelids.
It was overwhelming, a wave of pure sensation meant to erase the fight, the stares, the silence. But it was also a distance. It was Lexi the bombshell performing. It was too good, too detached. After a minute, she pulled back, her lips glistening. She looked up, her expression unreadable.
Then she shifted. She turned her body, lowering herself from her knees to sit fully on the cool floor, her back against the lower kitchen cabinets. She guided him down with the hand still in his hair, not toward her mouth, but lower.
“Here,” she breathed, her voice already slipping, losing its calculated purr. “Come here.”
Mack went down on her, his tongue teasing her pussy, his big hands gripping her thighs, holding her open. The taste of her, familiar and sharp, flooded his senses. She moaned, a ragged, guttural sound that vibrated through her entire frame.
It was Derek’s moan. A deep, unreserved, masculine sound of pleasure.
“Shit, bro—sorry,” she gasped, the words escaping on a breathless laugh, her old cadence taking over completely. “Let me switch my voice back.”
He didn’t stop. He doubled down, his tongue working her clit with focused intensity. The sound, that profoundly unfeminine, honest sound, was the most real thing he’d heard from her all day. It was the ghost in the machine, the friend in the fantasy.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growled against her skin, his voice muffled.
He felt her body shudder. The performance broke. Her sorority girl voice never came. What came instead was a fractured, desperate series of cries that were neither fully Derek nor fully Lexi, but purely her. Her heels dug into the small of his back as she climaxed against his mouth, her fingers clutching violently at his hair, pulling almost hard enough to hurt.
He gentled her through it, his own need a secondary thunder in his veins. When the tremors subsided, he crawled up her body, covering her on the hard linoleum floor. He entered her in one desperate push, the counter’s edge digging into his back. It was fast, and hard, and silent except for their skin slapping together and their ragged, open-mouthed breathing. He came inside her with a broken gasp, his forehead dropping to her shoulder.
They lay there on the kitchen floor, a tangled heap of limbs and discarded clothes. The fridge motor kicked on, a loud, domestic buzz. A faint smell of lemon polish and their own sex hung in the air.
Lexi’s hand found his where it was splayed next to her head. She laced her fingers through his. Her voice, when it came, was hoarse and utterly drained of any affect.
“We’re out of paper towels,” she said. “So cleaning this up is gonna be a real bitch.”
He barked a laugh, a sharp, surprised sound that hurt his throat. He nodded into the hollow of her neck. His body was heavy, sore, completely spent. The monument felt less like a prison and more like just a body, tired and used and finally, for a moment, at peace.
“We’ll deal with it,” he mumbled.
Her fingers tightened around his. “Yeah.”
Outside, a car alarm whooped briefly and then went silent. The neon from the other room continued to pulse, a silent, patient witness to the chaos, and the quiet, that lived inside Apartment 4B.