Page 62 of Devil

He gave me a bashful grin then, curls toppling over his forehead as he bit his lip. “There’s plenty for me in here,” he confessed and then pulled at the handle of one of the closet’s built-in drawers. Laid neatly inside were several delicately embroidered bra and panty sets, and then when he opened the next four, it was the same. Lace, straps, mesh. Leather. Vinyl. There was no consistency in the lingerie either—some of it feminine or virginal, some of it looking like it had to be ordered from sites that catered to very niche interests. Like he’d bought lingerie to act out every fantasy he’d ever had about me.

By the time we were done looking at the lingerie, he was visibly hard.

He didn’t have a condom, so he’d had me pull my sleep shorts down, stand with my feet together, and brace my hands on the full-length mirror at the end of the closet. He bid me to stay still while he slid his thick erection between my legs and slowly fucked my thighs.

I had no idea people did anything like this, but I was turned on by the raw utilitarianism of it, arrested by the look on Bell’s face in the mirror. The cruel sort of awe as he watched his dick disappear between my thighs over and over again. The greed as he slid a palm down my back or curled his hands around my waist to hold me still.

When he’d finished, his cum had spattered the mirror in thick, heavy spurts, and I’d panted along with him like I was coming too. I wasn’t, of course; I was just miserably inflamed, my nipples visibly erect through my tank top, my pussy wet enough that the top of his penis was slick when he slid it free.

He put his chin on my shoulder and flattened a hand against my stomach to pull me close; his other hand teased the stiffened tips of my breasts through the fabric as he watched us in the mirror. “I have to go to work,” he said, “but you remember what we talked about last night?”

I remembered. “You want me to learn how to masturbate.”

“I want that pretty snatch kept happy, and I won’t always have time to see to it, like this morning. And there might be times when you want to get yourself ready, before I get home from work maybe. I’ll get inside you either way, but you might enjoy it more if you’re able to slick yourself up first.” The hand on my stomach slid down to the scarlet curls between my legs and cupped me there. Hard. I moaned. “You remember where the toys are in my room?”

“Yes,” I breathed, trying to rub myself against his hand. “Bottom drawer of your closet.” He’d shown me an array of vibrators and silicone phalluses, promised me that they were all new. I’d told him that it hadn’t even occurred to me that they wouldn’t be new, since he obviously wouldn’t have a use for vibrators or for dildos, and he’d laughed a big, surprised laugh and hugged me.Oh my God, you are so cute, he’d said into my hair, delight lacing every word.

“You’re blushing,” observes Busy in the here and now, and I realize I still haven’t answered her, that I’ve been staring down at my lap while debauched memories flickered through me, heating my blood.

“Sorry, I just—I’m thinking about the commission. Yes, these are new jeans.”

“And your hair? You decided to care after three and a half decades?” She’s not asking uncharitably, like she might have done just last year, but with pointed interest. She can tell I’m keeping something from her.

I decide I can’t hide all the truth, not for any real amount of time at least, so I say, as casually as I can, “I’m seeing someone. And he, um, also has curly hair. A little curlier than mine, actually. So I’ve been learning from him.” I don’t mention thatlearning from himhas looked like him fussing over me both in the shower and out of it, scrunching my hair with that special towel, and having silk pillowcases on every pillow in the house. He wasn’t just patient while he tended to me but openly mesmerized, completely absorbed in his work, like there was no greater fascination than the damp locks twisting around his fingers.

Busy leans back against the love seat, looking skeptical. “Aboyis teaching you about hair care?”

“His sister-in-law taught him, he said. And anyway, it’s not hard to know more than me when it comes to these sorts of things.”

Fondness moves over Busy’s face. “That’s because you never had room in your head for anything that wasn’t art growing up. Or God. That’s why you had me.”

I smile a little at her, thinking of all the times she did my makeup for me, chose my clothes, told me what to say when I felt awkward in a group. She smiles back, and even though it’s not a large smile and even though I can see the last seven years hanging around her neck like a scapular made of lead, it’s reallyhersmiling back at me. It’s really Busy. And that’s really a crochet project on the arm of the love seat; that’s really a basket of yarn at her feet. That’s really a murder mystery she’s reading for fun next to the book she has to read for her group meetings. That’s really a hamper of neatly folded laundry by the short hallway; those are her plants green and shiny and loved on the windowsill.

She has to stay here. No matter what it takes, no matter what it costs me. My soul, an eternity in Purgatory, sleeping next to a monster who’s admitted that he wants to violate me and then make me crave the violation.

I’ll pay it. I’ll do it.

“So you’re seeing someone. Huh.” Her fingers do a little drumming thing on her thigh, half gossipy delight, half bemusement. “I figured you weren’t interested in any of it, sex or romance—or that you were maybe, but you were trying to do everything the right way and marry a guy who wears polo shirts to Mass and posts low-resolution memes online.”

“It’s not that I never wanted those things,” I say. It’s strange to be talking like this with Busy;shewas the one who’d chased after love or pleasure from the moment we got to high school, the one always explaining herself. “But there was never time to miss them or to chase after them or even to wish I could. And even now, this wasn’t something I sought out. It just happened—he just happened. When I’m with him, I feel like…”

I stop, because my honesty will lead me too close to things I don’t want to say around Busy.

I feel like a different version of myself. I feel like who I might have been if life hadn’t been so merciless, so grinding. A version of myself who’s wanted, who is allowed to want things too.

A version of myself who doesn’t have to light every hope on fire because she’s only allowed to settle her debts with ashes.

“I feel good,” I finish, a little unconvincingly.

“If you say so,” she says, watching me as she tucks her leg up on the cushion. “But if you need any help, if he’s bad news, tell me. It’s not like I can do much myself”—a little sourness in her voice now—“but at least I can tell you what not to do.”

“Of course,” I say. “But I don’t need any help.”

And oddly enough, I mean it. I believe it. Ryan Bellisbad news, the opposite of gospel, but sometime in the last two weeks, I’ve started to feel saved by it.

When I get backto Bell’s house the next morning, I expect him to be asleep. It’s a little before eight on a Saturday, and he was grumpy enough about me leaving for Buddy’s that I knew he’d stay up late to stew about it. In fact, I have the petulant text messages stretching into the early hours of the morning to prove that he was awake and unhappy.

I’m eating dinner alonehad popped up on my new phone only an hour into my shift, and then a few minutes later,I wish I were eating your cunt instead.