The Masquerade (3 page)

“Hey, I owed you, remember?”

I averted my eyes. Where was Justin? High and out his fucking mind? Passed out? I could only hope.

“Want to get back inside?”

My heart dropped, not getting
the memo that
Vee likes Justin, not you. You’re too old. Too far out of her league.

We walked back in
, and I hung a few steps behind her. Justin had moved onto beers, chatting amongst his group of friends on the stretch sofa watching a late-night horror movie. An ear-piercing scream drowned out the large room, drawing everyone’s attention to the screen. And I, now lined shoulder-to-arm next to Vee, stood sandwiched between the door and TV on either side.

Justin’s eyes narrowed on us despite the gory scene. Anger ran down his shoulders to his clasped grip around the sofa arm. He scoured me up and down with a burning glare. I didn’t have to look over myself to picture what he saw.

Fake-Vee had
tugged my tie loose. I’d left a couple of buttons undone. There were red stains on my shirt and pants I hoped didn’t look like lipstick, and one side of my shirt was un-tucked. I combed unruly tufts of hair in place, but they fell back.

I crossed
the distance and tapped his arm, shouting, “I was looking for you. Want to head home? I’ll pay for a cab. I spewed up
everywhere
.”

He cringed, scooting fully back. I bit my lip, hiding a grin. Better than the alternative running through his mind.

But
he agreed anyway. Was it a free ride that tempted him? Or maybe it was Vee waiting for him by the door. He stood, stumbling. I lifted his arm over my shoulder and helped carry him to the door. The smile had drooped into a sleepy grin. He seemed high and drunk.

And, h
opefully, a quiet pain in the ass.

I called a cab from my mobile phone, and the wait took forever since the bastards didn’t arrive with any sort of urgency for youths this early on a Sunday morning.

Justin sat on the curb with his legs scooped up in his hands hip-to-hip to Vee, and amongst lame jokes, insistent nudges at his not-funny jokes, and whispers to her, I discovered he would not be a quiet pain in the ass.

Unfortunately.

But at least there wasn’t any kissing.

I
sat a good couple of metres down and pretended to play a game on my phone.

• • •

Vee got in one side of the backseat
, and Justin fell into the other side and would have face-planted her lap if not for her quick hands.

I
pulled him out and sat him in the passenger seat.

“Convenient,” he muttered, drowsy, but with a hiss to his tone.

“Dude, you’ll throw up all over the back. You don’t get carsick in the front. And tonight is not the night to test your stomach’s limits. Just hold it in till we get home.”

Fisting my loose collar, he whispered his breath into my face, “Just like you did. Tough stomach you have there when you have a helper.”

“Great,” I boomed loud enough for everyone to hear, standing straight. “I’ll just sit in the back then.”

Probably frustrated,
Justin fiddled with the radio. To the cabbie’s credit, he didn’t complain once while we heard all six stations twice over in the span of a minute. It only stopped when he slumped back against the seat, snores snarling from his lips.

Vee
faced her side window, and I was squashed in mine thanks to Justin. He had suggested that if he had plenty of leg room he might not puke. Bull, but I didn’t want to carry on. The seat fit between my legs, my knees spread wide apart. I had to shuck up my pant legs to allow the fit. I couldn’t sit the only other way facing Vee. It seemed creepy given her intense interest out the window. So I rested my elbow on the door.

The trees blurred past
black as midnight under the starless sky. The emptiness of the night sucked out my thoughts as if they were smoke travelling through the gaps outside of the suffocating cab. High in the air, I looked on it all.

The
role-playing under the Eucalyptus trees felt like a solid weight on my chest. Passion, ecstasy—shame. It wasn’t
true
shame, though. As much as I should have felt bad for the way I used an unsuspecting and innocent woman, I didn’t. The idea of the shame heated my dick and deep inside, flustered my skin. I was slick at my temples, near my collar, under my arms. I licked my lips and closed my eyes, reliving the way I held her hips open and tilted, so I could penetrate her more fully, faster, slower, and then rougher, so she had no choice, but to fall apart because of what I did to her.

And she did.

That
Vee loved it.

Sucking me back to reality, a rush of air
brushed my cheeks. The cabbie told us we were at my place. I peered around and saw Justin passed out—not even a waking slap to the cheek would do much good.

“Wait here a sec,” I said to both the cabbie and Vee.

After I
had tossed him into bed, I tiptoed out not to wake our parents along the way. Vee was still inside the cab, leaning toward the cab door closest to the house. I slid into the back seat again as she raised her eyebrows.

“Hope you don’t mind,” I said. “I’m cootie-free.”

She giggled. “No, I’m just wondering why you came back in.”

I shook my head. Did she have no clue? “To see you home, of course.”

She shivered
and turned away. I would have offered her my suit jacket, but I left it spread over the ground under the masked Vee. Like swallowed poison, the chemical reaction struck me instantaneously. Nausea ate at my gut and anger coiled at my fists, which I hid under my thighs.

She probably didn’t want to say much to me anyway, fingering locks of her hair over her shoulder, twirling the rings on her fingers, face mirrored in the darkness, soft and subtle as I watched it without her notice, worrying her lip between her teeth.

Shh,
I wished I could whisper to her,
I’m right here, and I’ll be your mirror into a different life if you ever need it. At the click of your little fingers.

“Yo
u better stay here,” Vee said as we arrived at her house, the first words she had uttered since leaving mine.

“Sure.” I put on a smile. “You’ll be all right?”

She glanced at the stairs to her front door. “Should be.”

“Okay, good.” I looked at the spare seat between us. I wasn’t sure why.

“Thanks. It was … nice of you.”

“No worries at all. Didn’t even break a sw—” I said, “—no I think I did. Somewhere in the front yard near the hose. A lot of disgusting body fluids came out, which shouldn’t have.” I shivered and blushed, but she chuckled and covered her mouth, long fingers and shiny blue nails the same colour as her dress. My mouth watered, wanting to pop them in my mouth to suck and fondle.

Time was up,
and I didn’t want her paying. I threw the cab fare at the driver before she could even reach for it—it sailed through the air like an Autumn leaf and his hands waved about to catch it.

“Sorry,” I said, and he just shook his head with one corner of his mouth upturned.

“Well,” Vee said, “that was convenient. You always pay like that?”

“On occasion.”

“Well.” This time her tone was stern. She unbu
ckled and opened the door. “I better head in.”

She wouldn’t just
leave
. A kiss. A peck.

But her legs swung out, and she hitched up her skirt and stood on the pavement, then began her departure back to her normal life, mask on, and secrets intact.

“Hey, buddy,” I said and tapped his shoulder. “Hold on a sec till she gets in.” I had to make sure she was fine until the last step.

She pulled
out her keys, unlocked, then, finally, turned back, and lifted her hand. My shoulders sagged with relief, but I beamed. I lifted three fingers and waved goodbye with a salute.

You
may take the mask off now.

VEE

On Monday, Cara and I paced toward the spot where our girlfriends waited for us during recess break
. She struggled with her breath as did I, the pair of us on the brink of jogging. Up until now, we remained purposefully tight-lipped about the events from the party.

We had no idea …

Who got who
se number?

Who kissed whom?

Did anyone
get fingered by a guy?

Cara must have been able to tell from the suppressed grin on my face that I’d
received one of those. And I could tell by her all-teeth-baring grin that she’d make my gossip seem like child’s play.

We sat on the boulders of the plant bed in the corner of
the building, which had become a regular hanging spot for us long ago.

“So, girlies,” Cara said nodding at the others. She turned my way giving me a personal nod. “How cray-cray was Mark’s Mask party?”

“Sawyer finally kissed me.”

“I got piss drunk with Sawyer’s friends and had to stay at Reneè’s or else my mum would have murdered me.”

Some chuckles.

Cara batted her eyelashes, hoping we’d all commence screaming. I poked her shoulder to tempt her to spill, but she held strong through the other girls explaining every sordid detail about that one perfect kiss and all that alcohol. I let them beg, sitting back to eat a muesli bar before our rest time was up, and we had to leave for class.

Cara would tell me
after. We always exchanged.

W
hile they squawked and squealed over the hints Cara dropped, I rolled over the word
Rick
in my head, wondering what had happened at that party. If I’d known it was he at the bar, the guy who popped my alcohol cherry, I’d have walked the other way. Standing so close to him stole the air from my lungs and pounded my heart as if it had an adverse reaction. He was everything I shouldn’t want. Nineteen, lean and muscled, tall enough that in my heels I barely came up to his lips and a mesmerizing look in his eyes.

It wasn’t that I wanted
to look away, but the heat he held with his gaze burnt so fiercely I scalded inside, cringing into myself.

I was not ready for a guy like him.

I kicked some bark with my school shoes, smiling at the thought of
future possibilities. One day.

Maybe one day he’d think I wa
s as hot as Cara, boobs up in my face, shapely hips, and a come-fuck-me stare. I couldn’t control the two former, but I was as sexy as a hippo in a Miss Universe contest, so the eye thing was out, too.

“Hey,” Cara said, interrupting my thoughts and bringing me back to the bell ringing. She whispered in my ear, hand blocking the view from the other girls, “I got him to go down on me, and then I gave him a handjob.”

“No way!”

‘He’
was Danny Rocca, and she’d been flirting with him every class. They’d made out on a group date recently at the movies. Cara had gone to many bases already with a few guys, and I was yet to hit second. Was first a kiss? Was second? I was as uncool as they came.

“Yes way. But God, Vee, he was
so
shit with his tongue. What is he, a cat?”

“No, I think you’re
the
cat.”

She swatted me. “What happened with Justin?”

I blushed. “He kissed me once inside the party room.”

She swatted my butt this time. “Look at you!”

“Yeah,” I said, walking to our next class, “he’s weird, but cute.”

Cara said nothing for a while, not even a gesture or sound to indicate she heard what I’d said. I looked at her, and she was biting her bottom lip. Finally, at the door she said, “Shame about Rick Delaney.”

“What do you mean?” I asked and pulled her to the side by the shoulder.

“He full-on hooked up with some bimbo bitch under the trees out back. I’m still working on milking it from Danny. I’m
never
going out with him again, but he knows someone who knows her. I think she was a full on slut and shit, and Rick was a total
player
.”