Page 41 of Dirty Diana
The swing starts to sway as I lift myself up and down. It’s a new sensation entirely. The rain soaks into us both, our skin slippery. Jasper wraps his fingers in my wet hair, holding on tight. He twitches inside me, fighting the pleasure so he can last longer.
I squeeze my legs around him and he stays deep and warm inside me as I slowly circle my pelvis into his. My movements are exaggerated, like a slow turning clock. We have all night, I think. Each circle I turn, Jasper moans in my ear and I’m overcome with the sensation of wanting him everywhere. Deeper. Closer. More of him.
Jasper pulls my head back and slips his tongue inside my mouth, kissing me hungrily. I lift my hips again and the cold hits us both as he slips out of me, glistening wet and even harder than before. We are soaked and swollen and pulsing.
Then with agonizing slowness, he presses himself back inside me. The pressure is more intense, so intense I feel like I might break. “Diana,” he whispers into the falling rain. “Hold still,” he pleads. I hadn’t noticed that I was unconsciously moving my hips in those same small circles. I try not to move as he pulses inside me, about to burst. “I want more,” I beg. He enters me millimeters at a time, pulling himself out most of the way, then slowly back in. The moment he reenters me feels better than anything ever has and I grasp his knees for support to make sure I stay open. Over and over. “Just like that,” I moan, again and again, loud enough to wake the neighbors but I don’t care. We are so connected. So in love. So warm. I feel myself contract around him as he continues to gently thrust inside me. “Touch me,” I tell him, grabbing for his hand. He spreads my legs apart and glides his fingers around me, sometimes deep inside me, sometimes circling with more and more pressure. “I’m going to come,” I gasp as the orgasm overtakes us both, rippling through my entire body. We press our bodies together for balance, the rain falling harder.
Both of us dripping in ecstasy, Jasper takes me by the hand and we run through the driving rain to the school’s overhang. He pulls me to the ground and we lie together, still barefoot, fighting to catch our breath, sheltered from the heavy drops.
Jasper wraps his arms around me and I burrow my face into his chest. His heartbeat is loud and his breath grows steady—so steady that after a few minutes I think he’s fallen asleep. But then he kisses the top of my head and says again, “Thanks for the walk.”
—
For the next several weeks, we get up every night at nearly the same time and take long quiet walks around the neighborhood. When we get home, we have sex on the couch or in the shower or against the kitchen counter, never displacing Pippi from the bed. Our desire for each other is constant, bottomless. Some nights Jasper cooks for us, pancakes with honey, omelets and thick buttered toast, strong coffee. We stay up eating and talking and then both drift to our work. Jasper in the darkroom and me at the kitchen table. Partly because Justine liked it, and partly because I’ve been turned down for the art grant, I’ve gone back to the painting of Clea and tried to improve it.
One night while I’m working, Jasper comes and sits beside me, lining up my most recent sketches in a row. He touches the edges of each one and says they remind him of sexy recipes somehow, the way the text and image are combined. After that, I can’t stop thinking of laying them out like a book, rather than hanging them on a wall. Being with Jasper has inspired something more unrestrained in my work. My sketches come more quickly, like my hand can’t move fast enough to keep up with the pencil. Maybe it’s spending so much time, so uninhibited, around another person. But there’s something else too—it’s being with Jasper up close and watching him work. His energy is infectious and easy to get drunk on. Sitting at the table, I ask if he’ll photograph the sketches for me, in sharper focus and better light. He smiles and says, “Happily.” I spend the next few weeks assemblingthe photos into a book proposal and mailing copies to publishers for consideration.
—
“Is that orange ochre? Shit! That’s not orange ochre. That’syellowochre.” Justine’s standing over Melodie’s shoulder. “Stop! Stop what you are doing!”
Melodie drops her needle as if it had burst into flame. She’s been working on this section for a solid three hours. Justine’s been here for at least two of those hours and is only now noticing. “I…you said…”
“No, no, no. This is all wrong. Diana—tell her.” She grabs the fabric panel from Melodie. Increasingly, every time Justine decides something is wrong, I’m the only one she lets fix it. I hate it. Melodie will start to resent me, if she doesn’t already.
“Diana.” Justine holds the fabric panel up to the window. Melodie’s work is precise, and Justine’s piece as a whole is abstract fields of liquid color, so if this patch was meant to be orange ochre as opposed to yellow ochre, well…“Look,” Justine says, jabbing at Melodie’s work. “Look at that.”
In the sunlight, I recognize how yellow it is, but I also see the familiar strain on Justine’s face. This is not just about the color. It’s the familiar way Justine metabolizes stress around a deadline.
“I see what you mean,” I say, treading carefully. “But I still think it’s beautiful. The way the yellow vibrates against the black.”
Justine sighs, as if I’ve let her down too. “Start again.” She pushes the piece into my chest, picks up her bag, and leaves.
If hands could weep, my hands and Melodie’s hands would be weeping. I massage my palms. I could argue with Justine. I could run after her and tell her there isn’t time, we’ll never finish. But there’s no point. Justine knows we’ll get the work done. We always do. I set the panel on the windowsill and squint my eyes. I turn the fabric in every direction hoping to see something other than the truth: Justine’s right, the color is all wrong.
—
In the early morning, Alicia comes over to listen to me complain about the art grant rejection, about not hearing from a single publisher yet, and then about Justine. “She’s vibrating. Like stress-vibrating at a high level, even for Justine.”
It’s my day off, and I’m still in bed. Alicia brought two cups of coffee and my favorite donut holes. And because my apartment is always drafty in the morning, we’re eating under the blankets. Alicia scoots closer to me and lets me warm my ice-cold feet under her legs.
“Maybe she’s just trying to keep you all captive so she doesn’t have to hang out with Boring Mark alone. What do you think he’s like in bed? I bet he’s a premature ejaculator.”
Alicia usually picks on Mark with a little more gusto, but there’s a noticeable lack of enthusiasm behind her joke. And no one likes to sleep in more than Alicia. It’s not like her to come over so early.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She pulls the covers up over her head.
“Alicia!” I try to pull them back but she doesn’t budge. “Now you’re scaring me. What is it?”
“I got into grad school.”
My stomach lurches. “You applied?”
She nods.
“Where? Are you moving?”
