oldfic: you have your own [pink/britney]
in honor of this week's GLEE (!!!!!!) i finally dug this out - a rare femslash story from the archives. it has the early germs of an idea i've been obsessed with ever since.
you have your own
i've got your mind i said
she said i've your voice
i said you don't need my voice girl
you have your own
but you never thought it was enough
At three in the morning, with an empty fifth of Jack lying just out of reach, when you're out of cigarettes fucking again, it seems like a good idea. Later, after, you maybe admit that you were looking for an excuse. The fact is that really any plan to seduce a teen queen sounds like a good idea under the right circumstances.
Britney's in LA. You're in LA. And this time you give a guy two hundred bucks to make sure the flowers are her favorite. "So, not the kind the pretty boy used to send, then," he says. You give him another fifty.
You're sober now, and the sun is out, and the whole idea is still pretty funny. Linda laughs deep in her throat and says, "Like, for real? Or for a song?"
"Both, maybe."
"It has potential," she says. It's what she always says to your ideas, for a chord change, for the levels on a track, for a set list.
Once when you were really drunk, you said, "How 'bout me? Don't I got potential?"
You were really very drunk and maybe you only mumbled it instead of pushing it out like an offer, because she just rubbed her hand on the back of your neck and said, "You're ripe with potential, girl."
You signed the card for the flowers with "Let's kiss and make up," and then lots of X's and O's and your phone number and your name. You signed it "Pink" because you think maybe if she gets flowers from some girl named Alecia she'll throw them away or think it's a chick she knew in school or a fan or something.
When your cell rings three hours later, Linda's taken off and you're sitting by the pool. Fucker is poking his nose in the green water like he doesn't trust it. You don't blame him. The pool guy looked like he should be driving a Benz. You don't think he'd know what to do with actual dirt.
"It's Britney?" she says, asks, and you think if little girls in Japan know her name and she's still unsure, this maybe was a worse idea than you'd thought. You did high school already, you were lucky to survive as long as you did the first time. This girl is just like all the Barbie dolls whose upended, questioning voices mocked you down the hall until the day you said fuck it all and just kept walking.
You did high school girls already, too, and somehow remembering that makes all of this sound like an abso-fucking-lutely brilliant idea. Nothing tastes like high school girls. You laugh. That should go in the song. You should tell Linda that part.
"How's it hanging," you say, tossing a pretzel at the dog.
"Um, it's." Britney giggles. "I'm good," she says. "How are you?"
"Great. Fucking great."
"Oh," she says. You smile. It's been awhile since you made someone flinch just by swearing. "Great," she says. You imagine she's sitting with her knees together. Wearing, like, a flowered-print dress and crying about her ex-boyfriend talking smack about her. She says, "I just wanted to thank you for the flowers."
"No four-alarm allergy attacks?"
"Oh," she says. "That was only -- I sneezed once, I swear, and then they're all makin' it sound like." She stops, like she's caught herself at something. "Anyway, I was just, they're real pretty and I was just, I was wondering."
Fucker drops the pretzel next to your lounge chair as if it's a rubber toy. "Yeah?"
"Were we fightin' about something?"
"What?"
"Well, you said. The card -- we should make up?"
"It's just an expression," you say. You like that she skipped the kissing part. That has potential. "You know. It's just a thing people say."
She laughs, politely, nicely, and you feel like a twelve-year-old boy. You feel like you're standing at the chalkboard with a hard-on, and you're suddenly glad you're on the phone. You think you must be blushing bright. Fucking girls. You can crook a finger at some strange boy across a bar and fuck him up against a chain link fence in the parking lot without so much as a twinge.
"Well alright then," she says, as if something's been decided. You wonder if you sound like you have a hard-on. "Some people are coming over tonight. You should be there." She seems sure of herself now, and you hear how easily Linda will laugh at the whole thing. Pink gets flipped in sixty seconds flat, hardee-fucking-har-har.
You kick one Prada slide into the shallow end of the pool. You got to take them home from a photo shoot but they're not really you anyway. "You asking me to come over to play?"
"It's a party," she says, very nonchalantly. "If you want to bring someone that's okay."
"I left my harem at the mall, so maybe I'll just find somebody there who looks nice."
"Great," she says, way nonchalant. Maybe you should swear again. It seemed like she was listening then. She rattles off her address and you scribble the directions in your notebook even though the first week you lived in LA you paid fifteen bucks for a star map and drove right up to the gate. You mooned the security cameras and Carey laughed like a hyena. You haven't seen Carey in at least a month. You maybe miss him.
She hangs up with a polite "have a nice afternoon" as soon as you say okay and you realize you scrawled right over the kind of lame song you'd been working on before she called. You kick off your other sandal but it goes into the bushes. Fucker jumps in the water and paddles a circle around the bobbing shoe like a shark set loose near a chunk of bloody red meat. You pull your sunglasses back down and say "fuck" into your empty yard. "Fuck."
Britney's house is filled with a lot of really gay guys who look like they might be her dancers. There are a couple of hot chicks, too, but you can't tell if they're hags or there in their own right. They're all guarding the foyer like pit bulls, but no one stops you. No one even asks your name, though when you pass through, two of the taller guy dancers growl and hiss. You resist the urge to hit someone or break something so early in the evening.
There are two lesbian porno stars making out on a pool table. You wonder if Britney hired them, if this is what slightly edgy teen queens get for their parties when they've outgrown David Blaine. You wonder if she even knows what they're famous for. You wonder if they're allowed to play with guests or if there's a strictly look-but-don't-touch rule in effect. You run your hand over one of the girl's ankles, testing, touching. No one stops you. No one seems to notice.
There's a hand on your shoulder and then she's right there, saying brightly, "You came!" as if it were ever really in question. As if you'd been invited often enough that you'd started saying no.
"I heard a rumor that if you get drunk enough, you take your clothes off," you say. You think if that was in spitting distance of being true, you'd probably never have even thought of your great plan, but she seems to find it funny. She laughs like breaking glass, sharp and see-through, and you grasp her forearm a little too hard before backing away. "Where's the spiked punch?" you ask.
"I heard if you get drunk enough, you try to get all the boys to arm wrestle." She's guiding you by the elbow toward the kitchen, pushing you in front of her, and the soft silk of her little top brushes over the cool silver band wrapped around your bicep. You're wearing leather pants and a t-shirt that says "Fuck until the pain is gone" that some fan threw onstage. She's wearing a short jean skirt with long threads hanging like fringe. No bra. Sandals.
You like this. This is the kind of girl you know how to proposition. You don't need to be drunk, you just need to be within like a fifty-mile radius of her hairspray and syrupy-sweet perfume. It's only intoxicating in that it makes you as bold as you know you can be. You think if you could remember this smell when you were around Linda, you might actually get somewhere.
"If we both get drunk enough," you say, "maybe I'll try to get you to wrestle me."
She tosses her hair and laughs and it's like a commercial for something really expensive, fur or diamonds, shit like that. You can afford those things now, and you know if you wore them like she does, you'd never have to pay, anyway. You can afford it, but you still don't know how to ask.
You do know how to take, though. One hand on her waist, turn her around so her back's up against a carefully, artfully wallpapered hallway. You're up close, in her face, near enough to see where her lipstick meets her lipliner. The party throbs on behind you, and you don't kiss her because then you'd have to shut your eyes. You need another second to notice how fucking pretty she is so you can stay focused on the plan, on the whole point of letting yourself get close.
Then she wrenches your wrist, not enough to hurt but with more strength than you'd expected. "I'm not that drunk yet," she says, slipping out under your arm. "Come find me later," she tosses over her shoulder as she walks off. Your palm sweats against the linen wall.
You find the liquor on your own, the liquor and this trashy guy who tells you that before Wade found him he'd been a go-go dancer at a gay club in Dallas named J.R.'s. You have another drink and finally say, "So, was that true, that he's the reason they broke up? That's her type now?"
Go-go boy gets real quiet real fast and says, "Look, it's this or I go back to Texas, you know?"
You hear a shriek and splash of that sounds like someone getting pushed into the pool, and you say only, "yeah," moving away, away from the commotion. You end up waiting, watching from a small, quiet study on the second floor that no one else seems to know about.
Britney's standing down below with a group of pretty girls on the patio. They're all talking with their hands, hugging their bare stomachs and touching their hair. She's off to the edge of the gaggle. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows it looks a little like she's screaming, but you think it's actually just a yawn. You wish she was screaming. You wish she was angry at the world and tortured and fucked up like you. Like you but with manicured nails and accessories, like the girl in that Christian Slater movie who put her pearls in the microwave until they exploded like cherry bombs.
There's a burst of muted laughter and everyone's mouths move like goldfish. She looks back to the house, squints up like maybe she can see you half wrapped-up in the pale, gauzy curtains flooding her wood floors. Even downstairs, no one tried to talk to you. You don't know these people. You don't know her, and you're not even sure you really want to, not even to prove a point or win a bet or whatever.
You're turning to leave for real when a thin arm snakes around your waist. "Why are you really here?" she asks, breath musky and sweet like a fruit cocktail. You don't turn around, but you press closer, and you reach one arm back and grab her ass lightly.
"To see you," you say, tipping your head back and down a little so your cheeks brush. It's easy enough. It's even basically true. She seems like the kind of girl who likes to hear things that sound honest.
"Jimmy says you were asking about Wade," she says, very evenly.
"Just making conversation."
"Why do you care?"
You test the weight of her other arm where it's wrapped tight around your chest, pressing on your breasts. It's solid, not exploratory. You say, "I don't care who you fuck."
This time she doesn't flinch. "I fuck who I want," she says. You angle your neck but she doesn't move closer, doesn't kiss or lick. Your stomach drops a little at how much she's suddenly sounding like someone you'd pick up at a real party, a regular night out looking for a good time. You try not to care whether you're maybe the kind of good time she's looking for.
You wait, but she's either out of one-liners or not sure how to make the next move. She's not trying to get away, though, so you put your hand that's not on her ass over one of hers and move it to the hem of your shirt.
"Oh," she says, soft, fingers massaging your stomach muscles until you want to giggle. You want to laugh, you want to fucking die of hysterics because you're not even drunk yet and here's Britney two seconds from a good grope. You feel big and bulky with her lithe, little frame wrapped around you like that, all tangled up like a couple of crooked trees.
You turn and her hands trail across your body, still outstretched. Wisps of her hair get caught in the movement and are stuck to her lips and you swipe your thumb at the corner of her mouth. Her teeth are white and perfect, gleaming in the dim room, and you kiss her once, lightly, just touching your tongue to hers before pulling back. "You wanna do this here?" you ask, tucking her hair behind her ears and not looking anywhere but right in her eyes.
She blinks once, fast, and then again, like she's clearing her head. The hall lights glow behind her, bass thuds from the big living room where a DJ's spinning downstairs, the hostess is gone and everyone keeps on partying. You wonder if you could push her down right there and fuck her before anyone even noticed she was missing. You bend and kiss the hollow right under her ear and she all but fucking whimpers, like a stray.
This is really too easy. You wonder if maybe you should stop, stop now that you can say she wanted it and you left her standing there cold and alone. It'd still make a good song. Her skin is even softer under your tongue than it was beneath your fingers and you think, stop, stop, you should stop, this isn't really funny anymore, Linda wouldn't think this was so funny anymore.
She threads fingers through your hair and pulls you back up into a long, hungry kiss. You break away, tug back, try to figure out what to say to get yourself out of this without starting some kind of fight or looking like an asshole.
She stares right at you, hands shaking a little but eyes sure, daring you to call her on it, call her out, call her a faker. Your throat is dry. You could maybe use another drink. And another, and maybe a new fucking plan, because this wasn't quite how you'd imagined things going. She doesn't seem to know what to do with you, but she's sure as hell not pushing you away. She's not faking it. She wants this. She wants you.
She can't quite smile as she waits for you to say something, do something, and you can't turn away from someone like that looking at you like you matter, and so you bite her bottom lip and dig your fingers into her hipbones.
This time she pulls away first, but she grins and turns around, pulling off her shirt as she goes. There's no bed in the room, just a long, broad desk and a short couch. She stands with her bare back to you, one hand on the armrest, and looks over her shoulder.
"Lock the door," she says. You do.
She's sitting on the love seat by the time you turn back from the door, one ankle up, sandals kicked off on the floor. Her arms are crossed over her breasts, and there's a hint of some shiny pastel-colored underwear flashing between her legs. You think you'll straddle her, you'll sit and kiss and work your hand down between your bodies to twist her nipples or pinch her clit, but you take two steps toward her and you're on your knees. You lap up the inside of one strong thigh, pulling the underwear down and pushing her skirt up, and she sinks back into the cushions, moaning.
She gasps but it sounds more like a chorus than surprise. When you lick a line from front to back in one wide swath, she digs into the base of your neck with her nails and says, "Yes." She wriggles and writhes and while her body is moving you push her down and around, so she's flat on her back, head propped against the armrest. You pull the skirt up, over her hips and chest, over her head, and kneel between her open legs. She laughs with this wet roar, rougher than a giggle, like she's wet everywhere.
You dip down to kiss her, biting her mouth, swallowing her tongue, and she's saying your name now. "Pink," she says, and her hands are pushing your shirt up your back. "Pink," and she's lifting one ankle to fit snugly at the back of your knee. You hold both her breasts, weighing one hand against the other, sucking her nipples until she arches her back off the cushion and says it staccato and sharp, with an exclamation point at the end.
You smooth one thumb in little circles over the purpled flesh and say into her neck, "That's not even my name."
"Then what --" She sighs, breaking as you slide two fingers inside her. She closes her eyes. "What am I --" You twist your hand and curl your fingers and this time when she gasps it does sound like surprise, maybe even this side of shocked. You push deeper and she thrusts into it and back again. When you push in again you catch her from within, pads of your fingers grasping at the little ledge of bone.
You put the other hand under her, curving her spine up, lifting her ass off the couch, and this time when you move your hand deeper you curl your fingers in, like you're pointing at her across the room and saying, "You, come over here." You hold her there between two palms and her stomach trembles until you bury your nose on the soft spot below her belly button and blow one hot breath down onto her clit.
She digs a foot between the cushion and the frame and holds herself aloft, up against you, as she thrashes and comes. She doesn't say your name again. She doesn't say a word. She sort of falls and growls, and as her muscles thrum around your hand, she pulls at your hair, tugs you up and wraps both legs around your waist, trapping you. She pants gustily in your ear as you tease little earthquakes after the fact from each fold, and when she does finally speak again, she says, "Why -- why did you want to do this?"
You push up on one arm, half a push-up but her ankles are locked around your back. Her forehead is shiny with sweat and her hair is tangled. You say, because it sounds close to the truth and when you've made someone wet and messy you owe them at least that much, "I wanted to see if I could."
She drags deep breaths one after another and lifts a hand to push matted bangs out of her eyes. "Like a bet," she says, very evenly, thighs still like a vise.
She's so fucking beautiful like this, so mussed like any other girl after a good fuck but so silver through the sweat, so not scared of you. "Not a bet," you say. She slides one ankle down your back, over your ass. She runs her heel down your thigh and you take her hand and push it between your bodies. "More like a dare," you say.
Her legs loosen and you thought you were strong, if someone'd asked you if you were a tough girl you would've said yes, you have said yes, but her hand is holding your wrist and then your arm is twisted behind your back and you're lying face-first, nose in the upholstery, bent at the knee with your feet sticking up in the air. She's sitting on your ass and she says, "I get it," and you think, no, no, she doesn't get it at all.
Her light weight lifts off your back and you push up, ass first, and her hand sneaks between the cushions and your pants and then between your pants and your skin. She unbuttons them, fast, peels them off and has you pinned again before you realize she ever really let go. She gets it.
She pushes your shirt up your back, so your breasts are still covered but hers brush against your bare shoulderblades as she leans down to bite at your neck. She slides back down your body, wet and slick against your thigh, and when she puts her fingers in it's not tentative, it's not girly, it's hard and fast and exactly what you want. You buck hard and she takes her hand away, leaving you out of breath except to say "fuck," and it comes out all needy and begging and not pissed at all.
"Shh," she whispers, tongue like lace on your ear, and when she touches you again it's with her other hand, which is somehow indescribably hot in all the ways that this stupid boy Jesse had told you on the bus in seventh grade, how using his left hand instead of the right was like fucking a whole different woman. Now she's slow and smooth and you struggle to push her in harder and she retreats, letting you simmer, letting you suck in deep angry breaths until you have no choice but to breathe easily. And then she adds another finger, and another, and presses one knee into your inner thigh and you come, no name on your lips, just "oh, oh, oh, oh."
When you open your eyes she's dressed, standing at the window, looking down on her party. You sit up, yank your shirt down, fumble for your pants.
She says, "What did you win?" She is rigid and beautiful and almost perfect.
You clear your throat and scrub your face where it feels like the pattern on the couch is tattooed on your cheek. "I could write a song about it," you say, resting your arms on your thighs, looking at the floor.
"I fuck who I want," she says, though she sounds sad. Downstairs the party is loud and uninterrupted.
You stand up and she looks back at you. "Maybe that can go in the chorus," you say, and she smiles softly. You walk over to her and she leans her forehead against the glass. "Maybe I'll write a sad, slow song about this pretty girl at a party, and no one will know it's you." She shakes her head. "And I'll sing it on fucking MTV and tell Carson he'd never guess who it's really about, not in a million years."
She presses one palm flat on the pane, reaches the other hand back to you and you catch it between your fingers. "Don't make her pretty," she says. "Don't send her flowers and make her the pretty girl at the party. And don't call her by some other name. Don't go out there and be all coy about it."
"I'm not gonna --"
"You wanna tell people, fine," she says, and her vowels are thick and gentle even as her knuckles grip yours. "You just tell them the truth."
You turn her jaw and kiss her lightly on the lips. "You got potential, girl," you say, and her dewy dark eyes slide in and out of focus as she blinks.
END.
Credits: Title by Tori Amos.
you have your own
i've got your mind i said
she said i've your voice
i said you don't need my voice girl
you have your own
but you never thought it was enough
At three in the morning, with an empty fifth of Jack lying just out of reach, when you're out of cigarettes fucking again, it seems like a good idea. Later, after, you maybe admit that you were looking for an excuse. The fact is that really any plan to seduce a teen queen sounds like a good idea under the right circumstances.
Britney's in LA. You're in LA. And this time you give a guy two hundred bucks to make sure the flowers are her favorite. "So, not the kind the pretty boy used to send, then," he says. You give him another fifty.
You're sober now, and the sun is out, and the whole idea is still pretty funny. Linda laughs deep in her throat and says, "Like, for real? Or for a song?"
"Both, maybe."
"It has potential," she says. It's what she always says to your ideas, for a chord change, for the levels on a track, for a set list.
Once when you were really drunk, you said, "How 'bout me? Don't I got potential?"
You were really very drunk and maybe you only mumbled it instead of pushing it out like an offer, because she just rubbed her hand on the back of your neck and said, "You're ripe with potential, girl."
You signed the card for the flowers with "Let's kiss and make up," and then lots of X's and O's and your phone number and your name. You signed it "Pink" because you think maybe if she gets flowers from some girl named Alecia she'll throw them away or think it's a chick she knew in school or a fan or something.
When your cell rings three hours later, Linda's taken off and you're sitting by the pool. Fucker is poking his nose in the green water like he doesn't trust it. You don't blame him. The pool guy looked like he should be driving a Benz. You don't think he'd know what to do with actual dirt.
"It's Britney?" she says, asks, and you think if little girls in Japan know her name and she's still unsure, this maybe was a worse idea than you'd thought. You did high school already, you were lucky to survive as long as you did the first time. This girl is just like all the Barbie dolls whose upended, questioning voices mocked you down the hall until the day you said fuck it all and just kept walking.
You did high school girls already, too, and somehow remembering that makes all of this sound like an abso-fucking-lutely brilliant idea. Nothing tastes like high school girls. You laugh. That should go in the song. You should tell Linda that part.
"How's it hanging," you say, tossing a pretzel at the dog.
"Um, it's." Britney giggles. "I'm good," she says. "How are you?"
"Great. Fucking great."
"Oh," she says. You smile. It's been awhile since you made someone flinch just by swearing. "Great," she says. You imagine she's sitting with her knees together. Wearing, like, a flowered-print dress and crying about her ex-boyfriend talking smack about her. She says, "I just wanted to thank you for the flowers."
"No four-alarm allergy attacks?"
"Oh," she says. "That was only -- I sneezed once, I swear, and then they're all makin' it sound like." She stops, like she's caught herself at something. "Anyway, I was just, they're real pretty and I was just, I was wondering."
Fucker drops the pretzel next to your lounge chair as if it's a rubber toy. "Yeah?"
"Were we fightin' about something?"
"What?"
"Well, you said. The card -- we should make up?"
"It's just an expression," you say. You like that she skipped the kissing part. That has potential. "You know. It's just a thing people say."
She laughs, politely, nicely, and you feel like a twelve-year-old boy. You feel like you're standing at the chalkboard with a hard-on, and you're suddenly glad you're on the phone. You think you must be blushing bright. Fucking girls. You can crook a finger at some strange boy across a bar and fuck him up against a chain link fence in the parking lot without so much as a twinge.
"Well alright then," she says, as if something's been decided. You wonder if you sound like you have a hard-on. "Some people are coming over tonight. You should be there." She seems sure of herself now, and you hear how easily Linda will laugh at the whole thing. Pink gets flipped in sixty seconds flat, hardee-fucking-har-har.
You kick one Prada slide into the shallow end of the pool. You got to take them home from a photo shoot but they're not really you anyway. "You asking me to come over to play?"
"It's a party," she says, very nonchalantly. "If you want to bring someone that's okay."
"I left my harem at the mall, so maybe I'll just find somebody there who looks nice."
"Great," she says, way nonchalant. Maybe you should swear again. It seemed like she was listening then. She rattles off her address and you scribble the directions in your notebook even though the first week you lived in LA you paid fifteen bucks for a star map and drove right up to the gate. You mooned the security cameras and Carey laughed like a hyena. You haven't seen Carey in at least a month. You maybe miss him.
She hangs up with a polite "have a nice afternoon" as soon as you say okay and you realize you scrawled right over the kind of lame song you'd been working on before she called. You kick off your other sandal but it goes into the bushes. Fucker jumps in the water and paddles a circle around the bobbing shoe like a shark set loose near a chunk of bloody red meat. You pull your sunglasses back down and say "fuck" into your empty yard. "Fuck."
Britney's house is filled with a lot of really gay guys who look like they might be her dancers. There are a couple of hot chicks, too, but you can't tell if they're hags or there in their own right. They're all guarding the foyer like pit bulls, but no one stops you. No one even asks your name, though when you pass through, two of the taller guy dancers growl and hiss. You resist the urge to hit someone or break something so early in the evening.
There are two lesbian porno stars making out on a pool table. You wonder if Britney hired them, if this is what slightly edgy teen queens get for their parties when they've outgrown David Blaine. You wonder if she even knows what they're famous for. You wonder if they're allowed to play with guests or if there's a strictly look-but-don't-touch rule in effect. You run your hand over one of the girl's ankles, testing, touching. No one stops you. No one seems to notice.
There's a hand on your shoulder and then she's right there, saying brightly, "You came!" as if it were ever really in question. As if you'd been invited often enough that you'd started saying no.
"I heard a rumor that if you get drunk enough, you take your clothes off," you say. You think if that was in spitting distance of being true, you'd probably never have even thought of your great plan, but she seems to find it funny. She laughs like breaking glass, sharp and see-through, and you grasp her forearm a little too hard before backing away. "Where's the spiked punch?" you ask.
"I heard if you get drunk enough, you try to get all the boys to arm wrestle." She's guiding you by the elbow toward the kitchen, pushing you in front of her, and the soft silk of her little top brushes over the cool silver band wrapped around your bicep. You're wearing leather pants and a t-shirt that says "Fuck until the pain is gone" that some fan threw onstage. She's wearing a short jean skirt with long threads hanging like fringe. No bra. Sandals.
You like this. This is the kind of girl you know how to proposition. You don't need to be drunk, you just need to be within like a fifty-mile radius of her hairspray and syrupy-sweet perfume. It's only intoxicating in that it makes you as bold as you know you can be. You think if you could remember this smell when you were around Linda, you might actually get somewhere.
"If we both get drunk enough," you say, "maybe I'll try to get you to wrestle me."
She tosses her hair and laughs and it's like a commercial for something really expensive, fur or diamonds, shit like that. You can afford those things now, and you know if you wore them like she does, you'd never have to pay, anyway. You can afford it, but you still don't know how to ask.
You do know how to take, though. One hand on her waist, turn her around so her back's up against a carefully, artfully wallpapered hallway. You're up close, in her face, near enough to see where her lipstick meets her lipliner. The party throbs on behind you, and you don't kiss her because then you'd have to shut your eyes. You need another second to notice how fucking pretty she is so you can stay focused on the plan, on the whole point of letting yourself get close.
Then she wrenches your wrist, not enough to hurt but with more strength than you'd expected. "I'm not that drunk yet," she says, slipping out under your arm. "Come find me later," she tosses over her shoulder as she walks off. Your palm sweats against the linen wall.
You find the liquor on your own, the liquor and this trashy guy who tells you that before Wade found him he'd been a go-go dancer at a gay club in Dallas named J.R.'s. You have another drink and finally say, "So, was that true, that he's the reason they broke up? That's her type now?"
Go-go boy gets real quiet real fast and says, "Look, it's this or I go back to Texas, you know?"
You hear a shriek and splash of that sounds like someone getting pushed into the pool, and you say only, "yeah," moving away, away from the commotion. You end up waiting, watching from a small, quiet study on the second floor that no one else seems to know about.
Britney's standing down below with a group of pretty girls on the patio. They're all talking with their hands, hugging their bare stomachs and touching their hair. She's off to the edge of the gaggle. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows it looks a little like she's screaming, but you think it's actually just a yawn. You wish she was screaming. You wish she was angry at the world and tortured and fucked up like you. Like you but with manicured nails and accessories, like the girl in that Christian Slater movie who put her pearls in the microwave until they exploded like cherry bombs.
There's a burst of muted laughter and everyone's mouths move like goldfish. She looks back to the house, squints up like maybe she can see you half wrapped-up in the pale, gauzy curtains flooding her wood floors. Even downstairs, no one tried to talk to you. You don't know these people. You don't know her, and you're not even sure you really want to, not even to prove a point or win a bet or whatever.
You're turning to leave for real when a thin arm snakes around your waist. "Why are you really here?" she asks, breath musky and sweet like a fruit cocktail. You don't turn around, but you press closer, and you reach one arm back and grab her ass lightly.
"To see you," you say, tipping your head back and down a little so your cheeks brush. It's easy enough. It's even basically true. She seems like the kind of girl who likes to hear things that sound honest.
"Jimmy says you were asking about Wade," she says, very evenly.
"Just making conversation."
"Why do you care?"
You test the weight of her other arm where it's wrapped tight around your chest, pressing on your breasts. It's solid, not exploratory. You say, "I don't care who you fuck."
This time she doesn't flinch. "I fuck who I want," she says. You angle your neck but she doesn't move closer, doesn't kiss or lick. Your stomach drops a little at how much she's suddenly sounding like someone you'd pick up at a real party, a regular night out looking for a good time. You try not to care whether you're maybe the kind of good time she's looking for.
You wait, but she's either out of one-liners or not sure how to make the next move. She's not trying to get away, though, so you put your hand that's not on her ass over one of hers and move it to the hem of your shirt.
"Oh," she says, soft, fingers massaging your stomach muscles until you want to giggle. You want to laugh, you want to fucking die of hysterics because you're not even drunk yet and here's Britney two seconds from a good grope. You feel big and bulky with her lithe, little frame wrapped around you like that, all tangled up like a couple of crooked trees.
You turn and her hands trail across your body, still outstretched. Wisps of her hair get caught in the movement and are stuck to her lips and you swipe your thumb at the corner of her mouth. Her teeth are white and perfect, gleaming in the dim room, and you kiss her once, lightly, just touching your tongue to hers before pulling back. "You wanna do this here?" you ask, tucking her hair behind her ears and not looking anywhere but right in her eyes.
She blinks once, fast, and then again, like she's clearing her head. The hall lights glow behind her, bass thuds from the big living room where a DJ's spinning downstairs, the hostess is gone and everyone keeps on partying. You wonder if you could push her down right there and fuck her before anyone even noticed she was missing. You bend and kiss the hollow right under her ear and she all but fucking whimpers, like a stray.
This is really too easy. You wonder if maybe you should stop, stop now that you can say she wanted it and you left her standing there cold and alone. It'd still make a good song. Her skin is even softer under your tongue than it was beneath your fingers and you think, stop, stop, you should stop, this isn't really funny anymore, Linda wouldn't think this was so funny anymore.
She threads fingers through your hair and pulls you back up into a long, hungry kiss. You break away, tug back, try to figure out what to say to get yourself out of this without starting some kind of fight or looking like an asshole.
She stares right at you, hands shaking a little but eyes sure, daring you to call her on it, call her out, call her a faker. Your throat is dry. You could maybe use another drink. And another, and maybe a new fucking plan, because this wasn't quite how you'd imagined things going. She doesn't seem to know what to do with you, but she's sure as hell not pushing you away. She's not faking it. She wants this. She wants you.
She can't quite smile as she waits for you to say something, do something, and you can't turn away from someone like that looking at you like you matter, and so you bite her bottom lip and dig your fingers into her hipbones.
This time she pulls away first, but she grins and turns around, pulling off her shirt as she goes. There's no bed in the room, just a long, broad desk and a short couch. She stands with her bare back to you, one hand on the armrest, and looks over her shoulder.
"Lock the door," she says. You do.
She's sitting on the love seat by the time you turn back from the door, one ankle up, sandals kicked off on the floor. Her arms are crossed over her breasts, and there's a hint of some shiny pastel-colored underwear flashing between her legs. You think you'll straddle her, you'll sit and kiss and work your hand down between your bodies to twist her nipples or pinch her clit, but you take two steps toward her and you're on your knees. You lap up the inside of one strong thigh, pulling the underwear down and pushing her skirt up, and she sinks back into the cushions, moaning.
She gasps but it sounds more like a chorus than surprise. When you lick a line from front to back in one wide swath, she digs into the base of your neck with her nails and says, "Yes." She wriggles and writhes and while her body is moving you push her down and around, so she's flat on her back, head propped against the armrest. You pull the skirt up, over her hips and chest, over her head, and kneel between her open legs. She laughs with this wet roar, rougher than a giggle, like she's wet everywhere.
You dip down to kiss her, biting her mouth, swallowing her tongue, and she's saying your name now. "Pink," she says, and her hands are pushing your shirt up your back. "Pink," and she's lifting one ankle to fit snugly at the back of your knee. You hold both her breasts, weighing one hand against the other, sucking her nipples until she arches her back off the cushion and says it staccato and sharp, with an exclamation point at the end.
You smooth one thumb in little circles over the purpled flesh and say into her neck, "That's not even my name."
"Then what --" She sighs, breaking as you slide two fingers inside her. She closes her eyes. "What am I --" You twist your hand and curl your fingers and this time when she gasps it does sound like surprise, maybe even this side of shocked. You push deeper and she thrusts into it and back again. When you push in again you catch her from within, pads of your fingers grasping at the little ledge of bone.
You put the other hand under her, curving her spine up, lifting her ass off the couch, and this time when you move your hand deeper you curl your fingers in, like you're pointing at her across the room and saying, "You, come over here." You hold her there between two palms and her stomach trembles until you bury your nose on the soft spot below her belly button and blow one hot breath down onto her clit.
She digs a foot between the cushion and the frame and holds herself aloft, up against you, as she thrashes and comes. She doesn't say your name again. She doesn't say a word. She sort of falls and growls, and as her muscles thrum around your hand, she pulls at your hair, tugs you up and wraps both legs around your waist, trapping you. She pants gustily in your ear as you tease little earthquakes after the fact from each fold, and when she does finally speak again, she says, "Why -- why did you want to do this?"
You push up on one arm, half a push-up but her ankles are locked around your back. Her forehead is shiny with sweat and her hair is tangled. You say, because it sounds close to the truth and when you've made someone wet and messy you owe them at least that much, "I wanted to see if I could."
She drags deep breaths one after another and lifts a hand to push matted bangs out of her eyes. "Like a bet," she says, very evenly, thighs still like a vise.
She's so fucking beautiful like this, so mussed like any other girl after a good fuck but so silver through the sweat, so not scared of you. "Not a bet," you say. She slides one ankle down your back, over your ass. She runs her heel down your thigh and you take her hand and push it between your bodies. "More like a dare," you say.
Her legs loosen and you thought you were strong, if someone'd asked you if you were a tough girl you would've said yes, you have said yes, but her hand is holding your wrist and then your arm is twisted behind your back and you're lying face-first, nose in the upholstery, bent at the knee with your feet sticking up in the air. She's sitting on your ass and she says, "I get it," and you think, no, no, she doesn't get it at all.
Her light weight lifts off your back and you push up, ass first, and her hand sneaks between the cushions and your pants and then between your pants and your skin. She unbuttons them, fast, peels them off and has you pinned again before you realize she ever really let go. She gets it.
She pushes your shirt up your back, so your breasts are still covered but hers brush against your bare shoulderblades as she leans down to bite at your neck. She slides back down your body, wet and slick against your thigh, and when she puts her fingers in it's not tentative, it's not girly, it's hard and fast and exactly what you want. You buck hard and she takes her hand away, leaving you out of breath except to say "fuck," and it comes out all needy and begging and not pissed at all.
"Shh," she whispers, tongue like lace on your ear, and when she touches you again it's with her other hand, which is somehow indescribably hot in all the ways that this stupid boy Jesse had told you on the bus in seventh grade, how using his left hand instead of the right was like fucking a whole different woman. Now she's slow and smooth and you struggle to push her in harder and she retreats, letting you simmer, letting you suck in deep angry breaths until you have no choice but to breathe easily. And then she adds another finger, and another, and presses one knee into your inner thigh and you come, no name on your lips, just "oh, oh, oh, oh."
When you open your eyes she's dressed, standing at the window, looking down on her party. You sit up, yank your shirt down, fumble for your pants.
She says, "What did you win?" She is rigid and beautiful and almost perfect.
You clear your throat and scrub your face where it feels like the pattern on the couch is tattooed on your cheek. "I could write a song about it," you say, resting your arms on your thighs, looking at the floor.
"I fuck who I want," she says, though she sounds sad. Downstairs the party is loud and uninterrupted.
You stand up and she looks back at you. "Maybe that can go in the chorus," you say, and she smiles softly. You walk over to her and she leans her forehead against the glass. "Maybe I'll write a sad, slow song about this pretty girl at a party, and no one will know it's you." She shakes her head. "And I'll sing it on fucking MTV and tell Carson he'd never guess who it's really about, not in a million years."
She presses one palm flat on the pane, reaches the other hand back to you and you catch it between your fingers. "Don't make her pretty," she says. "Don't send her flowers and make her the pretty girl at the party. And don't call her by some other name. Don't go out there and be all coy about it."
"I'm not gonna --"
"You wanna tell people, fine," she says, and her vowels are thick and gentle even as her knuckles grip yours. "You just tell them the truth."
You turn her jaw and kiss her lightly on the lips. "You got potential, girl," you say, and her dewy dark eyes slide in and out of focus as she blinks.
END.
Credits: Title by Tori Amos.