Page 28 of Rent: Paid in Full
Hamper!
Yes, thank God, yes.
That’s it. I simply need to get to my hamper, dump my stained jeans, and then get changed for bed. I grab Miller’s T-shirt and hold it over my crotch as I skitter to my closet, opening the door near the bathroom to use as a shield for my nudity. I undress as fast as I can.
Miller is in the shower. The water is running, and I can hear him humming something. It’s a song I don’t recognize, but it sounds like something I know. Something I do recognize. The happy-smug satisfaction of a guy who just came in my mouth.
I put on a pair of sleeping shorts and get into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin.
Look, if you’re going to judge me for not brushing my teeth, honestly, I can’t stop you. Go right ahead. You can’t possibly judge me any harder than I judge myself.
I roll onto my side and close my eyes when Miller comes back into the room. I know he’s naked. It’s like his smile. I can hear it even when I can’t see it.
“You okay?” he asks as he turns off the lamp. The darkness is a relief. It often is for me. Respite from the light. From the speed and the sounds of the day. I open my eyes and stare into the black. “Hey, Haraway, you okay?”
Oh fuck. I need to say words.
Before I can do it, I have to take a second to remember how to do it. I move my tongue around in my mouth and will my dick to ignore the fact I can still taste him.
I should have brushed my teeth.
Karma really is a cruel little bitch.
“I’m fine,” I grunt.
“You done that before?”
Well, shit. I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t really want him to know he’s my first, in case he thinks it’s a big deal to me. But I think it might be worse to tell him that Ihavedone it before in case I was total crap at it and he thinks I’ve been going through life blissfully unaware that I’m shit at giving head.
“No.”
“Oh.” He has the decency to sound surprised. I give myself a strict warning about feeling good about that. “I wasn’t sure. You seemed a little nervous, but you made me feel really good.”
I’m not smiling.
What? I’m not, okay.
My lips just feel a little weird from the blowjob. I mean, yeah, my organs feel a little too big for my rib cage right now, and I’m a little floaty, but that’s perfectly normal after giving a dude a blowjob, right?
“Was it okay for you?” he asks.
“It was fine,” I snap. “I needed the money, so I did what I had to do to get it. No big deal.”
The insanity of what happened is starting to dawn on me. It’s crashing over me and landing in big, heavy waves, knocking me sideways, pulling me under, and spitting me out when my lungs feel like they’re screaming. Even if you take the fact that Miller is the owner of this particular dick out of the equation, I still had a dick in my mouth tonight. There’s no getting away from that. I crossed a line. A major, life-altering, big fucking line.
After all this time, I did something with a guy. After years of thinking about it, I actually did it.
And it got me off hard.
Relax. It’s not like it’s ever going to happen again, I tell myself over and over.It was one time. You earned more than you earn in a whole week at Pepe’s. It was a good thing. You’d have been crazy not to do it.
As of tomorrow, life goes back to normal.
I try to force myself to fall asleep. I use every ounce of my strength, but I can’t drift off because Miller won’t fucking stop talking.
“…new to being with a man…feel weird about it…talk to me…”
He drones on and on. Seriously, he goes on for what feels like an hour, and it drives me crazy. Talking about it is making it feel too real and too close.