Chapter 7: Advanced Placement
The weight room stank of sweat and disinfectant. Clanging metal and grunts filled the air, but for Aron, it was all just white noise. Daniel’s enthusiastic spotting and chatter about some girl from his sociology class bounced right off him. His mind was a locked room, and inside that room was a single, impossible drawer.
“You’re distracted, man,” Daniel said, reracking the barbell after Aron failed a third rep. “Seriously. Who is she? You gotta tell me. You've got that look.”
“What look?”
“The ‘I finally got laid and my brain is fried’ look. It’s a good look. Spill.”
It was the perfect opening. A normal guy would lean in, share the triumph, maybe embellish a detail. Aron just felt a cold sweat prickle under his arms. The lie tasted like old pennies. “It... it was just some girl. From a party. It was nothing.”
“Nothing? Dude, you choked on juice over it! ‘Anatomy’!” Daniel snorted, clapping him on the back. “Hey, no judgement. A first time is a first time. You want me to walk you through... logistics? For next time?”
“No,” Aron said, too quickly. “No, I’m good.”
He was grateful for the crushing weight on his chest, the burn in his muscles. It was a clean, simple pain. Uncomplicated. It almost drowned out the other thing, the hum of terrified anticipation that had been following him since the kitchen.
Back in his room, the door locked, the world narrowed to the space between his bed and his scarred pine dresser. The house was quiet. His dad and Lisa were at Home Depot. Daniel was gone. Where Chloe was, he didn’t know, and that unknown was a live wire in the house’s silence.
He approached the top drawer like it might contain a live animal. He pulled it open.
Socks, folded. A tangle of charging cables. A forgotten pack of gum. His fingers sifted through the mundane clutter until they touched something that wasn’t fabric or plastic.
It was a small box, lacquered and dark. He lifted it out. It was heavier than it looked. He sat on the edge of his bed, the comforter cool beneath him.
He opened the lid.
Inside, nestled in midnight-blue velvet, was a shape that took his brain a second to process. It was sleek, polished silver, curving to a gentle tip before flaring at a ridged base. It was coldly, undeniably beautiful in a way that made his breath stop. The morning light from the window glanced off it, casting a thin silver streak on his wall.
Engraved on the flared base was a single, elegant letter: A.
Taped to the underside of the lid was a slip of notepaper, her handwriting looping and confident.
Practice makes perfect. Start slow. Use the lotion from my bathroom, the unscented one. Don’t be a hero.
- C
A wave of heat, so intense it felt like nausea, rolled through him. His vision tunneled. This wasn’t a hint. It wasn’t a whispered suggestion in the dark. This was a physical object, a command, a curriculum. It was proof. Last night happened. This was happening. The ‘A’ burned against his thumb. He snapped the box shut as if it were radioactive.
The door to his room opened.
He hadn’t heard footsteps. She moved like smoke. Chloe leaned against the doorframe, already pushing the door closed behind her with a soft, definitive click. She’d changed into tight black leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, her hair down now. Her expression was unreadable.
“You looked,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
Aron stood, the box hidden behind his back, a pointless gesture. “What is this?” His voice cracked.
“It’s a tool. For your education.”
“This isn’t… this isn’t anatomy.” He couldn’t find the words. “This is…”
“What?” She took a step into the room. “Real? It’s real, Aron. Last night was theory. This is applied study.” Another step. The space between them crackled. “You said you wanted to learn. To not be nervous. This is part of it. Knowing your own equipment is step one. Knowing all of it is step two.”
“I didn’t ask for this.” He gestured weakly with the hand not holding the box.
“You didn’t ask for any of it,” she said, and her voice dropped, lost its teasing edge for a second. It was just matter-of-fact. “You just sat there, looking at me like a lost puppy, and I decided to feed you. Now you’re here. With your present.”
She was in front of him now. He could smell her shampoo, the same scent from her pillow. He backed up, his calves hitting the edge of his bed. He was trapped.
“Why are you doing this?” The question came out as a whisper.
Her eyes, tracing over his face, didn’t offer pity. “Because it’s fun. Because you’re here. Because you listen.” She reached out and plucked the box from his numb fingers. She opened it, gazing at the contents with a detached appreciation, like a jeweler assessing a stone. “It’s quality. You should appreciate that.”
She set the box on his desk, beside his physics textbook. The juxtaposition was insane.
He made a move to sidestep her, to get to the door, to air, to sanity. It was a half-hearted shift of weight. She moved with him, a dancer’s step, and placed her palm flat against his chest. The pressure was firm, insistent. She pushed.
He stumbled back, the backs of his knees hitting the bed, and he sat down hard. She followed the motion, looming over him, one knee dipping into the mattress beside his thigh. She caged him in, her hands planting on either side of him, her face inches from his.
“Running away again?” Her breath was warm against his lips. “You run from everything. From parties. From girls. From yourself. It’s boring.”
He was paralyzed. His heart was a frantic bird in his ribs. The fear was there, sharp and metallic, but underneath it, coiling tight in his gut, was something else. A terrible, yielding pull.
She leaned in closer, her lips brushing the shell of his ear. Her voice was a low, textured murmur that went straight down his spine. “You didn’t think last night was the final exam, did you?”
Before he could gasp, her teeth closed on his earlobe. Not a bite, but a firm, shocking pressure. A bolt of pure, undiluted sensation shot through him, paralyzing and electric.
At the same moment, her other hand, which had been braced on the bed, slipped. It slid down his side, over the worn fabric of his sweatpants, and under the loose band of his waistband. Her fingers were cool. They skimmed the line of his hip bone, a deliberate, exploring touch.
He made a sound, a choked-off gasp that wasn’t a word.
Her teeth released his ear. Her mouth stayed close, her cheek against his. Her hand stilled, her palm hot against his skin, her fingers curled possessively. She was waiting. He could feel the tremor in his own legs, the violent, conflicted ache in his core. The shame was a scream in his head. The want was a deeper, darker pull.
He didn’t push her away.
His own hand, acting on a desperate impulse he didn’t understand, came up and fisted in the soft fabric of her sweatshirt at her back. It wasn’t an embrace. It was an anchor. A surrender.
She let out a soft, satisfied breath against his neck. “See?” she whispered. “You’re already getting better at following instructions.”
Outside, a car door slammed. Lisa’s voice, cheerful and distant, called out, “We’re back! Got the shelf brackets!”
The spell didn’t so much break as warp. Chloe withdrew her hand from his waistband slowly, letting her knuckles drag against his skin. She straightened up, looking down at him with those calm, assessing eyes. He was still clutching her sweatshirt. He forced his fingers to let go.
She smoothed the fabric, a small, smug smile playing on her lips. She walked to the door, paused, and looked back at the box on his desk, then at him.
“Homework’s due whenever you’re ready,” she said, her voice normal again, conversational. “No rush. The teacher’s very… flexible.”
She opened the door and was gone, her footsteps silent down the hall.
Aron sat on the rumpled bed, the ghost of her teeth on his ear, the brand of her hand on his hip. The carved silver ‘A’ glinted from across the room, a promise and a threat. The line was not just crossed now. It was buried, miles behind him in the dark.
Aron and Chloe sitting on the bed. Aron is holding the black box he received from Chloe on his lap
It was buried, miles behind him in the dark. For a long time, Aron just sat there, the silence of the house pressing in like a physical weight. The box on his desk seemed to emit a silent, high-frequency hum that only he could hear.
He could throw it away. He could march to the kitchen trash right now, bury it under coffee grounds and eggshells. That would be the sane thing.
But then he saw her face, the challenge in her eyes, and felt again the shocking pressure of her teeth. Don’t be a hero. The command was absurd, but it coiled around his indecision. This was a test, and he had never been good at failing tests.
His limbs felt heavy as he stood and crossed the room. He picked up the box, the lacquered wood smooth and cool. The silver inside wasn’t garish; it was precision. It felt expensive. He wondered, with a distant ache, how she could afford it, or why she would.
His own reflection in its curve was warped, a grotesque parody of his anxious face. Practice makes perfect. For what? The question was a void he couldn’t stare into. Yet his body, traitorously, remembered the electric jolt of her touch, the dark, unfamiliar hunger it had awakened.
He found himself in the hallway, listening. The low murmur of the television drifted from the living room. He moved past it, a ghost in his own home, to the door of her bathroom. The unscented lotion was exactly where she said, a plain white bottle next to her fancy products.
Back in his room, the lock clicked with a finality that echoed in his ribs. He laid the objects on his bed: the open box, the bottle, a towel from his closet. A ritual setup. His hands were trembling.
This was insane. This was wrong on a hundred different levels he couldn't even name. He thought of Daniel’s proud, conspiratorial smile, of his dad’s oblivious trust. The shame was a hot, acidic wave.
But underneath it, colder and quieter, was a desperate curiosity. Who would he be, on the other side of this secret? Would the nervous static in his mind finally quiet? He was so tired of being afraid.
His fingers closed around the silver. It was shockingly cold. He lay back, the comforter rough against his shoulders, and squeezed lotion onto his fingers. The smell was clean, clinical. His heart hammered against his sternum, a frantic prisoner.
He took a sharp, ragged breath. The initial pressure was a foreign intrusion, a bright shock of resistance. He froze, every muscle locking.
Start slow. Her voice, a memory now, was calm and instructive in his head. He exhaled, forcing tension to drain from his legs, his back. He tried again, with deliberate, infinitesimal slowness.
The cold melted into a strange, full sensation. It was uncomfortable, then overwhelming, then—as he lay perfectly still, breathing through it—something else entirely. A deep, radiating warmth began to spread through his core, unknotting a tension he had carried for years.
A soft, shaky sound escaped his lips. It wasn't pain. His body, answering a question he’d never voiced, hummed with a low, surprised vibration. The polished ‘A’ of the buttplug rested against his prostate, a completed circuit.
He didn't move. He just stared at the ceiling, tears of confused release pricking his eyes, feeling for the first time both utterly possessed and strangely, terrifyingly free. The outside world faded to a distant murmur. There was only this profound, silent alchemy happening in the dark.
A knock at his door shattered the stillness. “Aron?” His father’s voice, muffled by the wood. “Dinner’s in ten. You okay in there?”
He couldn’t speak. His throat was sealed shut. He managed a strangled, “Yeah.”
“You sound weird. You coming down?”
“Be right there,” he called, the words oddly steady.
He heard his dad’s footsteps recede. The ordinary sound yanked him back. He moved carefully, the shift sending a bizarre, pleasurable jolt through him. Removing the buttplug was a slow, meticulous process, leaving him feeling oddly empty and hyper-aware.
He cleaned the silver meticulously, watching it catch the dying light from the window. He dried it and placed it back in its velvet nest, the engraved ‘A’ winking once before he closed the lid. He hid the box in the drawer, beneath the socks and cables where it had been.
Standing before his door, he smoothed his shirt. His legs felt unsteady, but his mind was eerily clear. A faint, unfamiliar heat still pulsed low in his belly. He opened the door and walked toward the dinner table, toward their voices, carrying the secret inside him like a lit coal.