Chapter 3: Forbidden Teachings
The boys’ locker room was a tomb after a meet, silent except for the drip of a distant showerhead and the hum of the fluorescents. The sharp, mineral scent of chlorine was undercut by something earthier: damp concrete, mildewed towels, the ghost of cheap body spray. I pushed my custodial cart through the door, the squeak of its wheels echoing off the rows of steel lockers.
My mind was still back in the girls’ room, with the leaking pipe and the video burning a hole in my pocket. I’d fixed the leak, a simple tightening of a coupling, my hands working on autopilot while my head swam with stolen images. Now, I had to face this mundane reality: mopping up the puddles, collecting the forgotten socks, wiping down the benches. The grit of reality was a poor substitute for the steam of my fantasies.
I started at the far end, near the showers. That’s when I caught the first trace of it—a scent that didn’t belong. Sweet, musky, unmistakably human. It cut through the chemical sterility of the place, a warm, living odor. Arousal.
I froze, my hand tightening on the mop handle. The shower area was around a tiled corner. The sound wasn’t the slap of water on tile. It was wetter, softer. A rhythmic, slick sound. And a voice, breathy and desperate, chanting a name.
“Salem… Salem… oh, god, Salem…”
The scent of Nebula’s arousal hit me before I saw her—a thick, humid wave that made the air feel close and charged. I took a silent step forward, peering around the corner.
She was sprawled on a clean-ish towel she’d laid on the bench, legs splayed wide, one hand fisted in the material beneath her. Her swim team jacket was discarded on the floor, her sports bra shoved up to expose small, firm breasts. Her nipples were pebbled, dark against her pale skin. Her other hand was working between her legs, two fingers thrusting deep inside herself, her hips rocking to meet them.
Her eyes were screwed shut, her short purple hair stuck to her damp forehead. Her lips, shiny with spit, formed the name over and over. “Salem… yes… please…”
She was lost in it, completely consumed by a fantasy that mirrored my own so closely it felt like a violation. Here was another hunger, another heart twisted around the same unattainable woman. She chanted Salem’s name like a prayer, her back arching, her breath coming in sharp gasps.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. A dark, jealous heat flooded my veins. This girl, this kid, was touching herself to the same image that haunted me. She was dreaming of the same hands, the same dominance. She was stealing my obsession.
My shadow, cast long by the overhead lights, slid across the damp floor and climbed the bench, falling across her trembling body.
Her rhythm faltered. Her eyes flew open, wide with a shock so profound it was almost serene. Her green eyes locked onto mine. Her fingers went still, buried inside herself. The only sound was the frantic panting of her breath and the steady drip from the showerhead.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t scramble to cover up. She just stared, her body frozen in a tableau of exposed, desperate need.
Her lips parted, but no sound came out. The sharp, coppery scent of her sweat mixed with the heady musk between her legs. It filled the space between us, thick and honest.
I didn’t step back. I didn’t look away. The shocked stillness shattered into something else entirely—a charged, mutual recognition. She saw my seeing. She saw the hunger in my eyes that mirrored her own, the same desperate root. She didn’t cover herself.
Instead, her fingers, still wet, slid slowly from inside her.
“You watch her, too,” she whispered. Her voice was raw, stripped of all pretense.
It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation and an invitation, rolled into one hoarse statement. My own secret, my own sickness, was laid bare by hers. The phone in my pocket felt like a bomb. The silence stretched, taut as a wire.
Then, I let the mop handle clatter to the floor. The sound was violently loud in the hollow room. I took one step toward her, then another. My shadow merged with hers on the wall.
I stood over her. Her green eyes tracked my every movement, wide and unblinking, but not with fear. With a ferocious, curious need. She was waiting. I reached down, my work-roughened fingers brushing her ankle, then tracing a slow path up her damp calf.
Her skin was smooth, hot. She shuddered under my touch, a full-body tremor.
“Say it,” I said, my own voice a low grating sound I barely recognized.
“Salem,” she breathed, the name a sacred curse on her lips. “I was thinking… of her hands.”
I knew. I knew exactly the imagined grip, the dominant claim. My other hand came up, not to her breast, but to her throat. I didn't squeeze. I just laid my palm against the frantic pulse there, feeling her life beat against my calluses. She arched into the touch, her head falling back.
This was all wrong. It was all broken. But the purity of the shared deviance was a current, pulling me under.
I lowered myself onto the bench beside her, the cold plastic pressing through my pants. My hand slid from her throat into her purple hair, fisting it gently, tilting her face toward mine. She went pliant, her breath hitching.
“Show me,” I told her, my mouth close to her ear. “Show me how you think of her.”
Her hand, trembling slightly, guided mine between her legs. The heat there was staggering. She was slick and open. I let her move my fingers, let her use my hand as her prop, her substitute. She rocked against them, her eyes locked on mine, seeing past me to the ghost in the room we both worshipped.
“Harder,” she gasped, and I complied, the pressure of my fingers becoming a command. “She… she wouldn’t be gentle.”
“No,” I agreed, a dark thrill slicing through me. “She wouldn’t.”
Nebula’s hips bucked, her own fingers digging into my forearm, her nails biting into my skin. Her chants dissolved into fractured moans. She wasn’t saying Salem’s name anymore. The sounds were wordless, animal, directed at the physical presence overpowering her—at me. Her back bowed, her sports bra straining.
I watched her come apart, using my hand, my implied strength, to chase a phantom. Her climax was a silent, tensing scream, her body clamping around my fingers in rhythmic pulses. She collapsed back onto the towel, spent, her chest heaving.
The humid air clung to us. Slowly, I withdrew my hand. She watched, dazed, as I brought my glistening fingers to my own lips. I tasted her—salt, musk, a bitter victory. Her eyes darkened.
Her eyes darkened, not with shame, but with a predatory focus that mirrored my own. She pushed herself up on one elbow, her gaze dropping from my face to my waist. The charged silence stretched, filled only with the sound of our breathing and that incessant drip.
“My turn,” she whispered, her voice ragged but sure.
Her hand shot out, not tentative but decisive, and grabbed the front of my jeans. Her fingers found the hard line of me through the denim, and she pressed the heel of her palm against it. A sharp groan escaped my lips before I could choke it back. The sensation was electric, a violent jolt after years of lonely friction.
She undid my belt buckle with a metallic rasp, her movements clumsier than her earlier confidence suggested. The button popped. The zipper growled down. I didn’t help her. I just watched, my heart hammering against my ribs, as she pulled me free into the cool, damp air.
Her green eyes widened just a fraction, taking in the reality of me. She’d never been with a man. I could see the calculation in her face, the brief flash of uncertainty swiftly buried under that relentless, hungry curiosity. This wasn’t about me. This was about power, about translating a fantasy into flesh.
“You think about her when you do this?” she asked, her breath hot against my skin.
“Always,” I grunted, the truth ripped from me.
She nodded, as if I’d passed a test. Then she lowered her head.
SHE TASTES HIM.
Her tongue, hesitant at first, traced a slow, wet line from base to tip. The warmth of her mouth was a shock, a silken heat that made my thighs tremble. She pulled back, smacking her lips slightly, assessing the foreign, salty flavor.
“Different,” she murmured, more to herself than to me.
Then she took me into her mouth, deeper this time. Her inexperience was obvious—the awkward angle, the scrape of teeth she quickly corrected. But her enthusiasm was its own devastating skill. She worked with a frantic, studious intensity, as if she could consume the essence of my obsession and make it hers.
Her hands gripped my hips, her short nails digging in. I looked down, watching the purple crown of her head bob in my shadow. My hand found her hair again, not guiding, just holding, feeling the vibration of her muffled moans. She was tasting my want, my frustration, my years of silent watching.
She was stealing that, too.
A low, ragged sound built in my chest. My fingers tightened in her hair. She took it as encouragement, redoubling her efforts, her throat working around me. The image of Salem in the steam, of Ruby’s ecstatic face, flashed behind my eyes, but it was blurred, overtaken by the physical reality of this girl’s fervent mouth.
This was a corruption. A beautiful, mutual ruin. The phone in my pocket felt like it was vibrating against my thigh, a phantom pulse from another secret life.
I was close. A warning tension coiled at the base of my spine. I tried to pull her back, but she resisted, her hands clutching my ass, holding me in place. Her eyes flicked up to meet mine, and in their green depths, I saw a challenge. She wanted this. She wanted to swallow the proof.
It was too much. My hips jerked forward once, involuntarily. A strangled curse tore from my lips as I came down her throat.
She took it, coughing once but swallowing hard, her throat convulsing around me. When she finally pulled away, her lips were swollen and wet. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, that assessing look back in her eyes.
“Still tastes like her,” she said, her voice hoarse. She said it like a discovery, not an accusation.
Then she leaned back on her hands, her sports bra still rucked up, her legs still bare. She looked spent, triumphant, and utterly lost.
“She’ll never want you, you know,” Nebula stated flatly. Her gaze was clear now, almost pitying. “She only wants the young ones. The pure ones. Like Ruby.”
The words were a punch to the gut, more visceral than any climax. They laid bare the pathetic core of my longing. I was just the old ghost in the bleachers, the hand in the dark, a tool for others to act out their own devotions.
I tucked myself away, my hands fumbling with the zipper. The metallic sound was final, a period on the sordid sentence of the last ten minutes. Nebula watched me, a strange, sad sympathy on her face.
“But I see you,” she said quietly, standing up and pulling her bra down, then reaching for her jacket. “I see you watching. And now you see me.”
She shrugged the jacket on, zipping it up to her chin, hiding the evidence of what we’d done. She looked like any other co-ed leaving practice, just a little flushed.
“The leak in the girls’ room,” she said, pausing at the locker room door. “It wasn’t an accident. Ruby kicked the pipe loose after practice. She was angry. Salem had to cancel their… private session.”
She let that hang in the air, a piece of the puzzle I didn’t know I was missing. Then she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her with a soft sigh.
I was alone again with the smell of us, the bleach, the drip. I leaned heavily against the cold lockers, my legs weak. My phone felt heavier than ever. Nebula’s final words circled in my head, mixing with the taste she’d left in my mouth and the searing truth she’d spoken.
She only wants the young ones.
The frustration curdled into something colder, sharper. A plan. It was a dark, shapeless thing, born from jealousy and now honed by a shared complicity. If I was just a ghost, I could move unseen. If I was just a tool, I could become a lever.
I pushed off from the lockers and picked up the mop from where it had fallen. The water in the bucket was grey and cold. I plunged the mop head in, watching the dirt swirl.