Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Flip's kitchen table had two empty wine bottles on it by the time they got to the good gossip. Jacqui had kicked her shoes off somewhere around the second glass, and now she sat with her feet tucked under her on the chair, turning her own glass in slow circles.
"This is good wine," she said. "Dangerously good."
"It was twelve dollars."
"That's the dangerous part." She pointed at him with the glass. "You always have the cheap stuff that tastes expensive. It's a scam, Flip. You're a scam."
He grinned and topped her up. Her cheeks had gone pink, and her laugh had gotten louder over the last hour, the kind of laugh that made his neighbors' walls feel thinner than they were. He liked her like this. He liked her a lot like this, actually, which was a thought he usually kept in a locked room.
"Come on," she said, standing and wobbling slightly. "Your couch is bad for my back and I want to keep talking. Show me your room. I've never seen your room."
"There's nothing in it."
"Then it'll take ten seconds."
He led her down the hall, complaining about the mess, and she flopped onto his bed on her stomach with her wine glass set carefully on the nightstand. His room was small and tidy, blinds half-closed, lamplight yellow. She lay there looking at him like she was settling in for the night.
"So," she said. "Tell me something you've never told anyone."
"That's a big ask for eleven o'clock."
"We're drunk. It doesn't count. That's the whole point of drunk." She propped her chin on her hands. "Come on. Something juicy. I'll give you one of mine."
The wine had done its work; his mouth felt loose and reckless. She gave him hers first, something about a wedding and a coat closet and a groomsman, delivered with total shamelessness, and he laughed until his eyes watered. Then she waited. She just lay there and waited, patient as a cat at a mousehole.
The conversation drifted, the way drunk conversations do, sliding sideways from confessions to exes to sex in general, and sex in general narrowed. She was graphic about it in a way that startled him, delighting in his flustered face, asking questions just to watch him squirm. Somewhere in there she said the thing.
"You ever sucked a dick?"
He choked on his wine. "What?"
"Sucked. Dick." She counted the words off on her fingers. "Because I feel like it's the most underrated thing on earth. I love it. I'm not even embarrassed. I love sucking dick. The weight of it, the way a guy loses his mind when you take him deep. I'd do it for hours if they'd let me."
"You're joking."
"I'm absolutely not. Give me a cock over a bouquet of flowers any day of the week." She rolled onto her side, watching him. "Why, what's that face? You look like I said I eat bugs."
The face was because his heart had started hammering. Because the locked room in his head rattled on its hinges, and the wine, and her, and the dark yellow light, all of it conspired.
"I have a confession," he said.
"Go on."
"I like it too." His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "Sucking cock. I mean. I love it."
Jacqui sat up so fast the bed bounced. "You're messing with me."
"I'm not messing with you."
"You?" She pointed at him, then seemed to recalibrate, her eyes actually moving over him, taking in something she'd apparently never looked for before. "Okay. Okay, wait. Now I need details. When? How? Are you seeing someone? Is there a guy?"
"No guy. No anyone." He took a breath, and then he was either going to do it or spend the rest of his life regretting tonight. "Can I show you something?"
"That's an ominous question."
"Can I?"
She waved a hand, curious now, sitting cross-legged on his bed like an audience member. He went to his dresser, opened the bottom drawer, and dug past the folded shirts to the back, where the dildo waited in its little velvet pouch. It was silicone, decently sized, with a flared base and a pair of molded balls at the root. He laid it on the bed between them.
Jacqui's eyebrows went up. Then up further. Then she made a sound like a kettle starting to boil and clapped both hands over her mouth.
"Flip!"
"I know."
"You have a dick in your drawer!"
"Where else would I keep it?"
She picked it up and weighed it in her hand like produce at a market, genuinely appraising it, and something about that made his face burn hotter than the confession had. "This is a good one," she said, professional. "Suction cup and everything. How long have you had this?"
"Two years. Look." He took it back from her. His hands were shaking, but the good kind of shaking, the skydiving kind. "You said you love it. Watch."
He brought it to his mouth and got it wet first, dragging his tongue along the shaft, letting spit pool until it shone. Then he tilted his head back, opened wide, and took it in.
He'd had years of practice. He fed it past his tongue, let it press into his throat, swallowed around it, and kept going. The molded balls came to rest against his chin. He held it there, eyes watering, throat stretched and full, and looked at her sideways.
Jacqui screamed. Not a scared scream, a delighted one, both fists pressed to her cheeks, jumping up onto her knees on the bed.
"No. No, you did not. You did not just do that." She grabbed his shoulder. "Breathe, oh my god, breathe, don't die with a dick in your throat, that's how they'll write your obituary."
He pulled it out slow, a slick, wet slide, and gasped, grinning, a strand of spit swinging from his chin. His eyes streamed. "Told you."
"You made that whole thing disappear. It had balls, Flip, the balls were touching your chin, I saw it." She was practically in his lap, buzzing, her whole body radiating heat. "That's a skill. That's an actual Olympic skill. How long did it take you to learn that?"
"Months. I was very motivated."
"I bet you were." Her voice had dropped, gone warm and low, and her hand was still on his shoulder, gripping now. She looked from him to the slick toy in his fist and back, and her pupils had blown wide in the lamplight. "Okay. I need it."
"Need what?"
"Give me that." She snatched the dildo out of his hand. "You got to show off. Now it's my turn, and then we're going back and forth until one of us taps out. That's the game now. I don't make the rules." She did make the rules, he could see it in her face, and she was already getting it wet, tongue flattening against the underside with obvious, shameless expertise.
"Fair warning," he said, settling back against the headboard beside her. "I don't tap out."