Bang by Ruby McNally Page B

At least, Mari didn’t think he was.
    Did you do this to any of those skinny white girls? she thinks.
    She breathes through her nose and takes him deeper than is totally comfortable, concentrating. It works. “Fuck,” Jack says helplessly. There’s a half second where Mari can tell he’s totally at her mercy before he recovers, wrapping his hand around the base of her ponytail just as his cock bumps the back of her throat. Mari lifts her lashes with some effort, watching him watching her.
    It’s worth it. In the end she thinks it’s the eye contact as much as anything else that does it for him, though she guesses her wet slippery mouth doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t ask if it’s okay first, and she’s glad. The permission is implicit and Mari likes that he knows it, likes knowing him this way on top of everything else.
    â€œMari.” He pulls her up with two hot hands on her face, sitting down with a thunk on the edge of the bed as she stands. Now Mari is the one towering over him. “Shit. Hi.”
    â€œHi yourself.” Mari steps between his knees and takes stock, his buzzed head and the sun-bleached hair on his arms. His beard always grows in reddish. Now Mari knows the hair between his legs does too. “So hey,” she starts, swallowing. His scars pucker strangely when his stomach ripples like this. “That was probably the most action this bed’s ever seen, huh?”
    Jackson doesn’t smile. “I meant it, you know,” he says, staring up at her. “What I said.”
    Mari feels that squeeze between her legs again, as visceral as if he’d actually reached down. Mine . “Oh yeah?”
    Jackson nods. His hands are curled around her hips, thumbs petting gently. His skin always looks whitest when it’s touching hers. “Yeah.”
    Mari licks her dry lips and climbs into his lap, pushing gently at his shoulders until he’s flat on his back on the mattress. He looks so good sprawled out that she follows the motion, settling herself on top. “Okay,” she mumbles into his shoulder, feeling shy and greedy. She wonders what happens next. It feels far away, like the consequences aren’t really hers but something she’s watching from the outside. They can’t stay partners and fuck each other at the same time. “Set an alarm,” she commands, curling herself around him like a barnacle. “I don’t want your parents to catch me up here in the morning.”
    â€œI’m a grown-ass man, Mari,” Jack says, but he does what she tells him, reaching down and pulling his phone out of his jeans on the floor. “Happy?”
    â€œYes,” Mari says, and if someone interrogated her for a full day and night she couldn’t tell them what it is that makes her add, “I love you.” She has for years, one way or another. It doesn’t feel particularly climactic.
    She feels Jack freeze for a moment then, all the muscles in his body going rigid and taut. Then he exhales into the dark. “Love you back,” he says. “Go to sleep.”
    So. That’s how it happens, pretty much. They doze until the alarm goes off the next morning, then eat coffee cake with Bruce and Barb in the kitchen and drive back to Great Barrington with their fingers laced together resting on Jackson’s knee. Mari feels like she’s in the Twilight Zone.
    â€œSo,” Jack says, pulling into her driveway. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow, huh.”
    Mari nods. Yesterday’s underwear is in her purse along with the empty wafer Tupperware, her jeans scratchy and rough against her bare skin. She feels like she broke curfew. “Uh-huh,” she tells him. She checks the front window before leaning in for a kiss.
    Inside, Patricia is sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Sonya’s Frosted Flakes and reading the paper. “Morning, mi vida,” she says without looking up.