The living room light was on when Alyssa got home. Alice was still up, paintbrush in one hand, wine glass in the other. She didn’t notice her daughter appear. The canvas she’d been working on was a swirl of white colours, far too delicate to be so arresting.
Alyssa stood in the doorway a while, watching the unsteady progress. Alice always painted better drunk, which was good since she was drunk pretty much every night. Alyssa cleared her throat but her mother still didn’t turn so she left her to it and walked the few metres down the narrow hall to the bathroom. The shower was on but the room was dark and the door ajar.
Kent. Alyssa hesitated, trying to make him out in the darkness. The water was steady, the shower curtain translucent enough to keep her there longer than was appropriate. She should have gone to her room but of course she lingered.
If she’d been male, or if their roles were reversed, of course it would be inexcusable. But times like this, she was glad to be female, to use it as an excuse. A veil of faultlessness and innocence. She wondered if she was a hypocrite. Probably. Acting fragile when it suited her. But whatever. It was her home. Besides, he should have locked the door.
She decided again that she hated him. Hate. It was a strong word but everything inside her intensified when Kent was around.
It was a hot night and she’d come home purposefully late, hoping nobody would be up. It was easier to come home late than have to endure the noise of them fucking like animals.
It’d been the same as long as she could remember. Every few months Alice found a new man and none of them stuck. Getting away to college had been an escape, only now summer had set in and Alyssa was back for two months to endure the same pattern all over. But this time it wasn’t the same. This time, everything felt different, more dangerous and loaded. Kent was more.
Alyssa pushed her dark hair away from the back of her neck. It felt damp.
She wondered what she was doing; standing there in the middle of the night, listening to the shower water and watching the shape of him. It was sick. He was fucking her mother. But she couldn’t help how profoundly he affected her.
It happened the first time she’d seen him and every day since. They’d all gone out to dinner the evening she’d returned from college and he had this disconcerting way of looking at her like he already knew everything about her. His dark eyes and his tanned skin and the edge of his mouth when he saw all the way through her.
She closed her eyes. She hated him. Hated him so much she wanted to fuck him into eternity.
Like Alice, he was also an artist but a photographer rather than a painter. The two of them had met at some community non-profit art project but Alyssa had switched off halfway through the story, too lost in the furrow between his brows. She was mature enough to know falling for someone so easily wasn’t sensible. It was crazy. It was ridiculous.
She sucked in a long breath. Sweat. Did he know what he did to her? Could he possibly? She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out more of him through the shower curtain. He had the water on cold, she could feel it even from a distance. She thought for one crazy second about peeling off her t-shirt and shorts and getting in with him. God knew she needed it. She could always pretend she’d been drunk.
Her mind had this way of working overtime. People never really knew her. All the things she did. Sometimes her entire existence felt like a secret, too huge to ever trust anyone else with. People knew parts of course. As much as she couldn’t avoid. As much as they found out. Alice probably knew more than she liked. Alyssa figured she should probably hate her but who hates their own mother?
She leaned against the doorframe. Her t-shirt was damp with sweat, thin cotton clinging to her breasts. She looked down at the dents of her nipples. Further past the flat of her stomach to the waistband of her shorts. Her legs. Ankles. Feet. They didn’t move. The water kept pouring. Half of her wished he’d catch her in the act of gawking at him.
But he never noticed her when she wanted him to. It was always the ugly part. The early-morning mess on her way to the bathroom. Or when she was flushed and sweaty from working in the yard. Never the good parts. Never when she dressed up and put up her hair and daubed highlighter on her cheekbones and mascara on her lashes. Never.
She was sweating again, even though she was just a few metres from the cold spray of the shower. He had this way of making her entire body flush. Summer always got under her skin and with him, it felt like things were burning up into something unavoidable. She wanted to shove her hand into her underwear and touch herself until she came and more than that; she wanted him to watch her, wanted him to see how insane he made her. The thought was enough to lose herself in but she steeled herself, found herself, went to her room, shut the door, took off her shoes and fell asleep.
***
Alyssa liked to think she could sense his presence. Nine out of ten times she’d get it right.
She woke the next morning and knew he’d left. There was nothing she could feel. No electricity, no danger, nothing. She opened her bedroom door and the apartment was silent. She went barefoot into the living room. It was a mess of paint tubes, palettes and empty wine bottles. It’d be midday before Alice got up and made an effort to deal with it all.
In the bathroom, Alyssa took off last night’s clothes. The shower and sink were bone dry, sun pouring in through the small window. She switched on the water and stood under it, felt the languorously beautiful way the last night and everything before it seemed to wash away. Pure cleanliness.
It was strange to think back to the previous night, it seemed like the two parts of her life couldn’t quite equate. Daylight shifted her perception. Kent had been standing where she was standing. Naked. It shouldn’t have struck her as much as it did but she was vaguely hungover and time and space seemed like ideas more than reality. If sound could travel, why not time? Why couldn’t by some miracle his past collide with her present so they were both in the shower simultaneously?
It was a ridiculous idea but she could imagine it easily, so viscerally, she could almost feel the way he’d press against her, his cock pushing inside, opening her up to him. The thought came on unexpectedly but she didn’t push it away. It made her breath catch. She bit her lip hard, hand pressed against the cool tiles, her ass pushed out and her legs apart like he was there, fucking her. Her free hand slipped down between her legs, feeling her wet pussy.
She closed her eyes, gasping at the thought of it. She could almost feel him. His hands and his body and his voice. The way he’d grip her hair and pull her head back, telling her how tight her pussy felt around his throbbing cock. His voice right there in her ear, heavy and hoarse the way he sounded when – when she knew how he sounded when he fucked but only because she’d lain awake night after night while he was fucking her mother.
The fantasy turned cold. Alyssa teetered on the edge of something, trying to will away the invasive thought but she felt the moment rush away, drowned out by shame. She suddenly detested herself. Her body felt too tense but she couldn’t do anything about it, not now. She wanted to scream, wondered if anyone would hear if she did. She closed her eyes, face tilted up to the shower, like the water could cleanse her from the inside out. Wash him out. She didn’t want to feel the way she felt.
She finished her shower, dried her hair and got dressed.
The living room remained infuriatingly untidy. She told herself Alice could deal with it but eventually caved and started to clean up, throwing out empty paint tubes, setting used brushes in turpentine, carrying empty wine bottles out to the glass recycling container. She vacuumed. She scrubbed paint off the coffee table and opened the windows.
One of Kent’s cameras was on the edge of the bookcase. She didn’t really know what kind of photography he was into. Still life? Street? Nude? She had no idea about any of it. She touched the camera, imagined taking naked photos of herself with it and putting it back for him to find sometime in the future. The thought made her clench hard. But. But he didn’t want her. He might even be repulsed.
One of his t-shirts was abandoned on the arm of the couch. She didn’t touch it but eyed it wistfully.
She heard the shower switch on so she went to start the coffee machine. Wondered whether Alice would want breakfast, though it was lunch time. Brunch maybe? She rolled her eyes as she rifled through the sparse kitchen cupboards, looking for possibilities. Overcompensating. And for what? She hadn’t even done anything wrong.
Everything she felt was a secret, wound up tight inside and nobody would ever know and she’d never do a thing about it because it’d achieve nothing. Kent didn’t want her. He wanted women like Alice. Beautiful and alive and glowing and charmingly crazy. Alyssa felt like a mess in comparison and when her mother finally appeared, the contrast between them seemed more apparent than ever. Alice should have been hung over, should have looked like absolute death but she never did.
Her blonde hair was brushed and silky, flowing over one shoulder and she was wearing a striped shirt dress. She looked incredible.
“I made coffee,” Alyssa said.
Alice smiled. Her makeup was perfect.
“That’s lovely,” she said, looking around for her purse, “but I have to get to the gallery. I’m already late.”
“Oh, right.”
“Yeah,” Alice looked vaguely regretful. “We’ll have dinner tonight though.”
And a moment later she’d found her things and was gone, the door thudding shut behind her. A whisk of perfume lingered in the air. Alyssa stood in the narrow hallway for half a minute and then went through into the kitchen and poured some coffee.
There was a different energy about being home alone and now she’d cleaned everything there was nothing to do. A stack of university reading she’d intended to make a start on eyed her from the corner of the room but she ignored it. She scrolled through her phone. She drank coffee. She didn’t want to do anything or see anyone and yet she felt restless at being so bored and alone.
She examined the canvases propped up around the room. The white one Alice had been working on the previous night stood out to her. Shades of white. The brush strokes were bold and seemingly random. But the whole piece seemed to emit ethereal light. It felt pure but flawed. It felt like something.
Alyssa sighed. Alice never kept the good ones. The painting would probably end up in some old man's office, someone who wouldn't look at it or care about it, let alone appreciate it.
She picked up Kent’s camera and examined it idly. There was a thrill in touching something of his. She accidentally turned it on and almost had a heart attack when it whirred into action. She switched it off again promptly and set it carefully back down.
His black t-shirt was still on the couch. He didn’t often leave clothes lying around. Maybe he’d been in a hurry. She picked it up and examined it. Plain cotton. It smelled like him. Alyssa didn't think it'd be particularly wise to become attached to an inanimate object but this inanimate object had been on his body. She wanted to steal it and hide it under her pillow and inhale it night after night.
She almost laughed at herself but the whole idea just made her ache. She craved him more than anything. Even just the smell of him made her insides shiver. She dropped down onto the couch unable to help the way he affected her. Alice was out. Nobody but herself. The tension she’d failed to expel in the shower seemed to rise to the surface of everything.
She only ever felt like she was pretending to be clean.
Often she liked to think of him watching her. His voice telling her what to do. His eyes all over her and his cock hard in his pants. Fuck. She lifted her butt off the couch and tugged her dress up around her waist. Pushing her hand past the waistband of her underwear, she touched her smooth pussy. She already felt wet. It was him. Always. Sometimes when she’d hear him with Alice, the sound of him would turn her on. It was sick, she knew it but she couldn’t help it. The way his voice leaned into indecipherability. It made her shudder. He had the kind of voice which she imagined could say the dirtiest things while still sounding like heaven.
God. She closed her eyes, fingertips massaging her clit hard. She could imagine him standing in front of her. Seeing her open for him. She pushed her underwear down, kicked it off from around her ankles and opened her legs wide. For him. Always for him. It made her heart thud to think of him seeing her so open, on display for him. He’d see everything. Her fingers slicked harder. She was breathing hard now, helpless moans escaping her mouth.
“Fuck,” It turned her on to imagine performing for him, being his. Just his, his baby, his fucktoy, his whatever he wanted. She shuddered out a breath. Sometimes this even felt like enough. She always figured reality wouldn’t measure up to any fantasy and with the fantasy so far out of reach, this was the best she’d get from him. Her own fingers and her imagination. It could be enough. It had to be.
She leaned her head back, lifting up off the couch as she pushed a finger inside herself. His cock would be so much more substantial. She imagined him fitting it into her, making her take it, her body shifting to accept every hard, throbbing inch.
“Fuck,” She could hardly imagine the way it’d feel, being so full of him, being that close, inhaling him and kissing him and feeling his body move in and out of hers. It was beyond precious.
Nothing mattered but him. The warm summer air was coming in through the windows and the room still smelled like paint but he was all she knew, all she wanted. Her pulse raced in her ears, drowning out the rest of the world. Her body inched closer to release, insides tightening in anticipation.
“Please, oh fuck, please,” She was gasping his name, over and over as the orgasm finally hit and she moaned out loud, her mind full of him as pleasure tore through her aching body. It felt like it’d go on forever and she wanted it to, didn’t want to come back to reality so she kept touching herself, teeth digging hard into her bottom lip as she moaned and writhed until she’d taken everything she could.
Then she heard a noise.
She froze. Even in her dazed state, she knew the sound was too close to have come from anywhere outside the apartment. Her heart was still pounding. She opened her eyes and sat up and blinked. Kent was in the doorway. She blinked again, hoping her imagination was still playing overtime but he didn’t disappear.
“I didn’t know you were here,” she said. She felt like the entire world was caving in inside her stomach. Everything became hollow. Had he seen? When had he even come in? She wondered if by some bizarre chance he’d been in all morning and she hadn’t realised. Her heart felt weak.
“The door was unlocked,” he said. He looked up from his phone but his eyes didn’t meet hers. “Is Alice in, or - ?”
“At the gallery,” Alyssa said. Her hand was still buried between her legs. She didn’t move it. He didn’t acknowledge it. His eyes went to her underwear on the floor. He looked at her.
He always made her feel desperate to be more. Something he’d look at and want beyond reason. But she wasn’t. She was a joke.
“Great,” he said. “I’d better get down there.”
He left, the door clicking shut behind him. Alyssa didn’t – couldn’t – move for ten minutes.
***
She felt like she was in trouble. She had that feeling she used to get when she was a kid standing outside the principal’s office. That feeling of being discovered. But it was worse because she didn’t even know how much he’d seen. Or heard. She winced at the thought of herself saying his name out loud. It made her want to crawl under her bed and hide. How could she have been so stupid? How could she ever even look at him again?
She decided for her own sanity that he hadn’t realised what she was doing. The noise she’d heard must have been him coming in through the door and by then she’d finished. It had all been over. He hadn’t seen or heard a thing. He wouldn’t have stood there and watched and if he had she would have known. She would have felt it. She sighed. She tied her hair up into a ponytail and put on fresh underwear and got out of the stifling apartment and took a bus into town and spent the day wandering aimlessly, glaring at affectionate couples and sipping lemonade. She almost wanted to be back at college.
By the time she got home, it was beginning to get dark. Alice was back, clattering through cupboards and drawers.
“Whatcha looking for?” Alyssa asked cautiously.
“Just a brush,” Her mother sounded uncharacteristically frustrated. Alyssa wondered if she’d run out of wine.
“How was the gallery?”
“Fine,” Alice sighed. “The show’s in two weeks. I thought it was three and now they’re not shifting. I’m way behind schedule.”
“Huh.” Alyssa had known the date of the exhibition. There were flyers everywhere but it didn’t seem helpful to point this out. She wondered where Kent was. Every evening since she’d been back from university he’d been here only tonight he wasn’t. She went back into the hall. The bathroom was silent, the door ajar.
“Where’s Kent?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Oh, we’re done,” Alice said dismissively. “In that way at least.”
“What do you mean?”
Alice looked at her. “We’re still friends. It’s nothing dramatic.” There was an edge to her voice, the kind that wanted the subject dropped.
Alyssa frowned. She opened her mouth and then closed it again. She looked away silently.
“Have you eaten?” Alice asked, her voice a level softer.
“Yeah,” Alyssa said and she went to her room and lay on her bed until she fell asleep.
***
The next day, Alyssa was out in the yard thinking about Kent’s t-shirt. She dug at a weed in the lawn and wondered if the shirt was still on the couch where she’d left it yesterday. If him and Alice were over, maybe he wouldn’t come back for it. Maybe she really could steal it. It was probably the only thing she’d ever have of him anyway.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Alice’s landlord. The house was split into three apartments and Jason occupied the middle floor. He was old and interfering and Alyssa didn’t know how her mother could stand him. The garden was communal and lately he always seemed to appear when Alyssa was out.
“Is your mother around?” he asked.
“Oh no, she’s out.” Alyssa focused on a particularly stubborn weed and jabbed the end of her trowel at it hard.
“She usually is,” Jason sounded distasteful.
Alyssa glanced up at him. She wondered if he knew how much she disliked him. It didn’t seem like it and she hated him all the more for being so obtuse.
“She gets around, right?” he pressed.
It took a moment for Alyssa to realise he was still talking about Alice. Her eyes narrowed.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” He didn’t meet her eyes but she didn't stop looking at him. It was interesting to watch him get progressively redder.