Dangerously Happy (17 page)

When our set ended, I pounded two glasses of water, opened a bottle of beer and started wandering through the crowd, pretending to be social when really I was looking for Dario. No sign of him. It was weird, being this person now. A guy girls hit on—sometimes surprisingly aggressively. A guy the other men at the events circled around, trying to get or stay close to someone who represented, who was part of the core of what was happening at Loft Ten. Two guys started surveying me on influences, favorite bands, favorite brands, and when they veered off onto the topic of the best guitars and strings I started planning my escape. But there was a hand on my shoulder. Dario behind me. I was so glad to see him I’m sure anyone paying any attention would have seen everything written in the smile I gave him. But that sudden swell of happiness withered a second later. Something was wrong. His expression was grave. He pulled me away, not even acknowledging anyone I’d been talking to, which wasn’t like him at all.

When he got me away from them he said, “We found a girl on the roof, doped out of her mind. It kind of looks like someone may have done something to her. I think we need to dump everyone’s drinks, fast as we can. Then . . . I don’t know? Do we call the cops?”

“
Will that get you in trouble? This setup, with the alcohol, it’s not really legal, is it?”

“
I don’t five a fuck if I get in trouble.” I'd never seen him so angry. Maybe I'd never seen anyone so angry.

I suddenly felt ashamed that my first thought had been for Dario, and not for the woman. “It’ll take too long, anyway,” I said. “Whoever’s roofying people, he could be anywhere right now. He could have someone in one of the bathrooms, or outside in a car.”

“
Fuck.” Dario looked like he’d be capable of beating the guy to death if he caught him. “Look, get Tom and the guys to help you. Grab a couple garbage bags, collect every single fucking bottle, can and cup. Tell people what’s happened. Tell them I’ll refund their ten bucks.”

Within fifteen minutes the loft was dry as a church picnic in Utah. While Dario and a few of his friends searched the loft, the roof, and the parking garage, four of us manned the door, refunding everyone’s entrance fee and making sure that everyone was leaving in buddy formation.

“
I still think we should have called the cops,” Dario said when everyone was gone. “I shouldn’t have let her friends talk me out of it.”

“
She can still go to the cops tomorrow, if she decides that’s what she wants.”

Dario looked at me for a long time, like he was trying to read my mind. Then he sighed. “Yeah. It’s not our decision, putting her through that.”

“
So what happened? How’d you find her?” I hadn’t had a chance to ask during the mad rush to dump the potentially laced drinks and empty the place before whoever the predator was could sheer another victim off from the herd.

“
I don’t really know. They came and got me after. Her friends found her on the roof. Someone told me her underwear were in a wad a few feet away, and she was almost unconscious.”

“
God. That sounds bad.”

“
Yeah.”

“
Maybe they scared him off. Maybe he heard people coming and took off before he really did anything to her.”

“
Maybe.” Dario didn’t sound hopeful. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

“
Why?”

“
I should have killed this thing after that first night you and Melissa got dosed. Whatever happened to that woman tonight is on me.”

“
It didn’t even occur to me that he’d come back.”

“
No. Me either. But that’s no excuse.”

“
Dario, things like that happen everywhere. On college campuses. In bars. At parties. Just because you were part of bringing people together here doesn’t make this your fault.”

We canceled the event for the next night. Before the following weekend, we recruited six friends to play bartender, and six others to patrol the loft, stairwell and roof throughout the weekend events, and we printed up a box of fliers to be handed out with each drink, warning of the wolf in our midst and admonishing all comers to keep their hands and eyes on their drinks at all times. During the week, Dario talked to Daisha, a friend of Bethany, the woman who’d been assaulted. She was evasive about how much had happened to her friend, but did tell us Bethany had refused to report anything to the police.

Two nights after what had happened to Bethany, a noise woke me up in the middle of the night. Startled awake from deep sleep, in the pitch black of the room it took me a few seconds to get oriented and to figure out what that eerie sound was, filling the room like a primal alarm of danger that made me afraid seconds before I understood what I was hearing. Dario crying. Dario screaming, his howls smothered in his pillow. Trying to wake him gently, I stroked his naked back, a sickening feeling slicing through me when that just made him scream more fiercely.

Trying to make my voice as soothing as possible I said his name softly, said, “Love, you're safe. You're in your bed with me. You're having a bad dream.” I touched him again, and he whimpered, calming, and I said it all again, stroking his hair until he woke, until he understood that it was me there with him. He let me hold him, but he wouldn't tell me what he'd dreamed.

It was weird how normal everything was that next weekend. The dozen of us who’d handled the situation the night of the assault, and who were now part of organizing and executing our new security measures were somber and alert, but, despite the fliers and the verbal warnings from the bartenders, the rest of the crowd carried on as if nothing had changed. As if our little weekend utopia hadn’t been spoiled by a malignant presence.

I couldn’t stop wondering if he was there. If he’d been there every night since the time I’d gotten dosed, along with Melissa and the others. If he’d gotten to someone else before Bethany, and we’d never known about it. Whenever we talked about it, Dario looked so angry it scared me. Then, the way they do, things went back to normal. We kept the new security measures in place, and after a while it just felt like that was how it had always been.

Even though there was this dark spot on the collective, like you see on x-rays in movies where people find out there’s a tumor growing inside of them, the thing between me and Dario went on thriving. Getting stronger and bigger with each week. Maybe the ugly thing that had happened during the show, dealing with that together, was even part of me feeling even closer to him.

“
Let’s just go upstairs,” I said to him as soon as I got to the loft on one of my solo rehearsal nights.

He grinned. “Aren’t you cocky? Too good to rehearse now, are you?”

Upstairs, Dario was incredibly tender, as if he’d sensed that I was nervous. We spent a long time just kissing, then finally undressing each other little by little, touching each other almost shyly, as if it were our first time together. Then long, delicious minutes of him kissing me—my mouth, inch after inch of my skin—as if he were feeding a long-denied hunger, driving me to a pitch of unbearable need. It was me who finally reached for the condom, and when he started to take it from me, I said, “Let me,” and put it on him. Even if he’d sensed something earlier, he looked moved. Almost anxious.

“
Are you sure?”

I smiled. “You wouldn’t be wearing a condom right now if I weren’t sure.”

“
Stealing my lines,” he teased, but he looked so, so serious. He kissed me softly. Tentative and tender as a first kiss. “Promise me you want this for you. That you’re not doing it because you feel like you’re supposed to do it for me.”

“
I want it. I want to feel you making love to me. I think about it all the time.”

He took me on my back, his body cradled in the V of my thighs. I didn't think I'd be so nervous. I thought I'd waited until I was so sure, so overwhelmed by the need for him to make me fully his, that I'd feel nothing but eager and aroused. But as soon as he was on top of me, as soon as I felt the hard warmth of his greased-up cock nudging between my cheeks, I was seized by fear. Not fear that it would hurt; I knew it might, that taking his cock, which was bigger than the toy he'd used on me several times, might be a strain, might even be too much, but that wasn't what was triggering my fear. That wasn't what was pumping adrenaline into my veins, making me go suddenly taut and stiff when I'd meant to be all pliant eagerness so nothing would take away from Dario's excitement and pleasure at this moment he'd awaited so patiently for such a long time. This first we'd both been waiting for, aching for, for so long.

The scary thing was, strangely, the same thing I was hard and aching for: having him on top of me, inside me, fucking me. Not a toy. Not a couple fingers. Him. I finally understood that term that had always sounded like a coy Victorian euphemism: giving yourself to someone. Suddenly I felt to my core, in a way I never had when I'd had sex with my girlfriends, even being the top with Dario. This moment of surrender. Of utter vulnerability.

Lying under him, I waited for that pressure, that familiar dilation, the penetration. But he was still. Looking down at me, holding me in his steady gaze. Then he pressed his soft lips to mine, gave me a deep, tender kiss.

After, looking into my eyes, he said, “You're trembling.”

“
It's okay.”

“
You're scared.”

“
A little. More than a little. But please, Dario, I want you to.”

Another warm, wanting kiss, his body quivering against mine with pent-up need, with holding back.

Then, gazing at me, he said, “You know I'll be gentle. I'll go slow.”

“
I know.”

His trembling body flexed against me, and there it was, that mounting pressure as his hard cock sought entrance, then that stretching strain as by body slowly yielded to him.

His voice tight, strained, but tender he said, “Baby, breathe. Be soft.”

I realized my whole body was contracted like one huge flexed muscle, and I willed myself to let go. To breathe. To let it happen. Soft kiss. Sweet smile. And then he flexed again and the thick length of him slid slowly into me, stretching and filling me.

God, it was strange, God it was wonderful, feeling him inside of me. So different from being the one penetrating, nothing like being penetrated by the toys, or even his fingers. Him.

Him holding himself over me, trembling, looking at me as he made love to me. Dario was so tender, so cautious I had to tell him how good he felt, that I loved what he was doing, that he could stop holding back. And to look up at him, see his happiness and his pleasure in his eyes as he gazed at me, the euphoria of giving him that, and Jesus, even after all we’d done, all the pleasures he’d taught me, I never could have imagined how intense, how immersive and consuming my own pleasure could be, his cock filling and moving inside me, his hand wrapped lightly around mine while I stroked myself off just before he came, trembling, whimpering, murmuring, “Aidan, Aidan, Aidan.”

After, I told him what I’d known for weeks. That I loved him.

Much more than asking him to make love to me, my declaration of love had him looking utterly taken aback, but a little while later he told me that he loved me too.

“
Don’t do that,” I said.

“
What?”

“
Don’t echo it back to me.”

So serious, so earnest. “Do you think I don’t mean it?”

“
I just don’t want my confession to make you feel like you have to say it too, before you really feel it. And if you never feel it, that’s okay, I’m—”

“
Aidan.” A lingering soft kiss on my lips to silence my nervous babble. “I’ve known I was in love with you since the first night we spent together.”

I don’t think words had ever made me feel so good in all my life. “After one night?” I don’t know if I was challenging something that was too wonderful to believe, or fishing for more.

“
We’ve known each other a long time. It happened little by little. But that night made me sure. I guess because you weren’t some unattainable object of unrequited desire anymore.”