Chapter 29: Midterm Throne
The midterm was in Lecture Hall B, a steeply tiered cave of worn velvet seats and scratched wooden desktops. Ben arrived early, his stomach knotted. He hadn’t seen Patricia since the locker room two days ago, but the taste of mud and her foot was a phantom stain on his tongue. He took a seat near the back, arranging his pencils, trying to anchor himself in the normal ritual of it all.
The hush of concentrating students settled over the room as the professor distributed blue exam booklets. The only sounds were the rustle of paper and the low buzz of the fluorescents.
Then the door clicked open. Patricia slipped in, her backpack slung over one shoulder, a slight, apologetic smile for the professor. She scanned the rows, her eyes gliding past Ben, then back. She walked up the steps, not to an empty seat, but directly to his row.
“Scooch,” she whispered, not looking at him.
Confused, he shifted his materials inward. She didn’t sit in the vacant seat next to him. Instead, she turned and, with deliberate casualness, lowered herself to sit on the narrow wooden desktop right in front of him, her back to the professor. She swung her legs over so her feet bracketed his hips, her butt planted squarely on his closed exam booklet and notes.
He froze. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Sitting. It’s a full house,” she murmured, pulling out her own pencil. She shifted her weight, grinding down on his papers. “Consider it a shared workspace.”
“Patricia, I can’t—”
“Ben Thompson,” the professor’s voice cut across the room. “Eyes on your own desk, please.”
A hot flush crawled up Ben’s neck. He looked down, but his desk was Patricia. The curve of her spine pressed against the edge of his desktop. The faint, clean scent of her laundry detergent mixed with the warmer smell of her body through her yoga pants.
The exam began. He tried to lean around her, to peer at his booklet pinned beneath her. He managed to hook a finger on the edge and pull, trying to slide it out.
Patricia leaned back, her shoulder blades pressing into his forehead. “Stop fidgeting,” she said, loud enough for nearby students to hear. A few snickers rippled out.
He endured it for ten minutes. He tried writing on his thigh. He tried memorizing questions and closing his eyes to think. It was impossible. Frustration boiled over into a low, helpless sound in his throat, a strained whimper.
In one fluid motion, Patricia bent forward as if to stretch her back. She peeled off her right sneaker, then her sock. It was a bundled-up, white athletic sock, damp from wear. Before he could react, her hand came back over her shoulder, and she shoved the warm, moist fabric into his open mouth.
The taste was immediate and shocking—salt, the synthetic tang of athletic wool, the intimate essence of her skin. It was a deeper, more concentrated version of the sweat from her foot days before. He gagged, his eyes watering.
Her voice was a feather-light whisper, barely audible. “Stay quiet or I’ll make you sniff my exam-week panties next. They’re… ripe. Now be a good desk.”
The industrial laundry room's stale air still clung to him, a cocktail of detergent, mildew, and the intimate, salty sweat of fourteen other people that had been rubbed into his skin. Ben’s nostrils flared at the memory, his shirt damp from being used as a communal towel. He walked the empty hallway towards the library, the echoes of Avery’s laugh and the feel of Patricia’s hands pinning his shoulders between the dryers replaying in a sickening loop.
He needed air. Real air.
Pushing through the heavy side door, he emerged into the service alley behind the athletic complex. The evening was cool, a sharp contrast to the cloying heat of the laundry. He leaned against the rough brick, closing his eyes, trying to exhale the humiliation.
“Well, look who’s airing out.”
His eyes snapped open.
Patricia leaned against the opposite wall, a single duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She’d showered—her blonde hair was damp and loose around her shoulders, and she wore clean sweatpants and a hoodie. But the look in her eyes was the same: that sharp, amused glint.
“Leave me alone, Pat.” His voice was flat, drained.
“Just making sure our little sweat rag didn’t get lost.” She took a few steps closer, her sneakers silent on the asphalt. “You did a good job back there. For a human washcloth.”
Ben pushed off the wall, turning to leave. “We’re done. You got your pictures, your laughs. It’s over.”
“Is it?” Her question stopped him. It wasn’t a taunt, not exactly. It was curiously flat. “You think a few sniffs and some forced affection in a basement is the end of our story?”
He turned back. “What else could there possibly be?”
She smiled then, a slow, knowing thing. She dropped her duffel bag. It landed with a soft, heavy thud. “You tell me, Ben. You’ve been keeping score since freshman year. Calculus, debate team, intramural soccer… you’ve got a little ledger in your head. Wins and losses. And right now, you’re so far in the red you’ll never climb out.” She unzipped her hoodie, revealing a tight tank top beneath. “That’s eating you alive. I can see it.”
“So what?” he challenged, a spark of his old defiance igniting. “You want a rematch?Here? Now?”
“A rematch implies the first match was fair.” She shook her head.“No. This is… settlement. You owe me. For all of it. And I’m here to collect something a little more tangible than your pride.”
“What does that mean?” A cold thread of suspicion wound through his gut.
Patricia nudged the duffel bag with her foot. “Avery and the girls, they’re… enthusiastic. But they’re amateurs. They think humiliation is an end in itself.” She looked at him, really looked at him, and for a second the playful malice was gone, replaced by something colder, more analytical. “It’s not. It’s a tool. It’s the pre-match warmup. The real victory isn’t making you smell their socks, Ben. It’s making you choose to.”
“I’d never—”
“You already did,” she interrupted, her voice quiet and definitive. “In the laundry room. You chose compliance over escalation. You chose to endure. That’s a choice. And choices have consequences.”
She bent down and pulled open the duffel bag. Inside, nestled on top of her cleats and gear, was a professional-grade digital camera, sleek and black. Next to it was a small, tripod flash unit. He’d seen it before, in the wrestling match. She pulled them out.
“The laundry room was impulsive. Dark, grainy phone videos.” She set the camera on the ledge of a dumpster, attaching the flash with practiced, efficient movements. “This is intentional.”
Ben’s breath hitched. The alley felt suddenly smaller, the high walls closing in. “You’re insane. No one’s posing for anything.”
“You don’t have to pose.” She powered the camera on; it emitted a low, solid whir. The flash unit gave a confirming beep. “You just have to be. Consider it… documentary realism. Capturing the new dynamic. For the archives.”
“I’ll walk away right now.” He took a step back.
Patricia didn’t move to stop him. She simply looked at the camera, then at him, her head tilted. “You could. You could go back to your dorm, try to forget tonight. But you won’t. You’ll lie in your bed and you’ll see my face. You’ll feel those dryer doors against your shoulders. You’ll wonder what I have. The pictures from before, the new ones I’m about to take… you’ll wonder who I might show, and when.” She met his eyes. “The uncertainty will corrode you faster than anything I could do to you here. The not knowing is the real trap. So, stay. Get it over with. Let me make it definitive.”
The logic was perverse, insidious, and it wormed its way into the part of his mind still screaming for a way to regain control, to contain the damage. A part of him recognized she was right. The scattered, blurry videos from before were one thing. This, under the stark, professional flash in the concrete confines of the alley… this would be a record. A final, ugly ledger entry.
“What do you want?” The question was a surrender, and they both knew it.
Patricia’s smile returned. She pointed to a spot on the ground before her, a patch of asphalt stained by old oil. “Sit.”
His limbs moved stiffly. He lowered himself, the cold ground seeping through his jeans.
“Good.” She picked up her duffel bag and upended it. Her soccer cleats, shin guards, a pair of socks balled together, tumbled out. The gear smelled faintly of fresh grass and that distinct, sharp athlete’s sweat. She picked up one cleat, holding it by the laces. The rubber studs were packed with dark, dried soil.
“You licked the treads clean in the locker room,” she said conversationally, as if recalling a minor detail from a textbook. “But that was a group activity.A spectacle. This is private. This is between us.”
She dropped the cleat into his lap. The weight of it was startling. “Get it ready for tomorrow’s practice. You know how.”
Ben stared at the twisted, metal-tipped studs. The memory of artificial turf and bitter grit filled his mouth. His hands trembled as he picked it up. He brought it to his face. The smell was dense, organic. He closed his eyes.
A blinding white flash erupted, freezing him in the act. He flinched.
“Don’t stop,” Patricia said softly from behind the camera. The shutter clicked again, a rapid, mechanical sound that swallowed the silence of the alley.Click. Click.Click.
He licked. The taste was exactly as he remembered, but somehow worse for being expected, for being chosen. He worked his tongue around a stud, dislodging the packed earth.Flash. Click. A tear, hot and furious, escaped his closed eyelid and traced a path through the grime on his cheek. He didn’t wipe it.
“The other one,” her voice instructed, no longer lighthearted, just calm and absolute.
He switched cleats. The process was the same. The degradation was the same. Yet, with each mechanical click of the shutter, something shifted inside him. A strange, hollow numbness began to spread, displacing the shame. He was in a recording. He was a subject. The act was separate from him.
When both cleats were as clean as his tongue could make them, he set them neatly side-by-side on the ground. He looked up at her, his vision blurry. The camera lens looked back, a dark, unfeeling eye.
Patricia lowered the camera. She looked at the screen on the back, scrolling through the images with a detached interest. “Excellent,” she murmured. She then walked over and stood directly in front of him, her sneakers almost touching his knees. She slowly, deliberately, pulled off one sneaker and then the other, placing her bare feet on the cold asphalt. She wiggled her toes.
“You did a good job with the cleats,” she said. “But they’re tools. This…” she lifted one foot, presenting her sole to him. It was pale and clean from her shower, but the skin was tough, calloused. “This is the source. This is me.Kiss it. Not like last time. Like you mean it. Like it’s a privilege.”
Ben stared at the offered foot. The hollowness filled with a dull, throbbing ache. He leaned forward. He pressed his lips to the arch. The skin was cool and surprisingly smooth. He held the kiss.
No flash went off.
He looked up, confused.
Patricia was just watching him, the camera hanging by her side. Her expression was unreadable. “Stand up,” she said.
He got to his feet, his body aching.
“Turn around. Face the wall.”
He obeyed, pressing his palms against the cold, rough brick. He heard her move behind him, the rustle of her sweatpants. Then her body pressed against his back, her front to his back, her chin coming to rest on his shoulder. She lifted the camera, holding it out in front of them both, aiming the lens at the brick wall just inches from his face. He could see their reflection in the polished glass of the lens—her face, calm and focused beside his, which was streaked with dirt and tears.
“Smile, Ben,” she whispered, her breath warm against his ear.
In the reflection, he saw the corners of his own mouth twitch upwards into a grotesque, empty imitation of a smile.
The flash exploded, bleaching the brick wall, their faces, the entire moment into a flat, white oblivion.
The afterimage burned in his vision. He heard the final, definitive click of the shutter.
Then, the pressure of her body was gone. He heard her pulling her sneakers back on, gathering her cleats, packing the camera away. The sounds were methodical, final.
“See?” her voice came from near the alley’s entrance. It was light again, almost cheerful. “That wasn’t so bad. Now you know exactly what I have. No more wondering.”
He didn’t turn around. He listened to the sound of her footsteps fading, the heavy service door sighing open and then clicking shut.
Silence flooded back into the alley, deeper and more complete than before. He was alone with the stain on the ground and the ghost of the flash imprinted on his sight. The transaction was complete. She had collected her payment. And he was left holding the receipt, a document of his own making, waiting in the dark for the interest to come due.