Calendar Girl - An erotic novel (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels) Page 12

  ‘Take care of yourself, Merritt. I’ve really enjo–’

  ‘Don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Bye, Merritt,’ he amended.

  ‘Good bye, Eli.’ I hung up.

  ‘Merritt?’ Jeffrey started and I waved him off.

  ‘Right. Where is the waitress? I need about six pounds of french fries. Stat!’

  The worst part or the best, I’m not sure, was when I got home and found a hot pink box wrapped in ribbons sitting inside my screen door. I opened it to find the toys that Eli and I had shared. And a note:

  Did you know that the clitoris actually extends under the large lips of the vagina? In some instances, the clitoris is up to six inches long. That’s a lot of pleasure, don’t you think? Most folks think it’s just a tiny pink epicentre of flesh. Little do they know.

  As my parting act, I’m asking you to go find out about that extra area of pleasure you might not have known about. Think of me. And remember, I wanted you. Bad. And you’re great.

  Much love,

  Eli

  I had actually read that in the past, but hadn’t given it much thought at the time. Now, I peeled my work clothes off slowly. The black jeans hit the floor with a soft complaint, my panties barely resisted. I peeled off my black cable knit sweater, tossed it. Unsnapped my bra and dropped it too. I arranged myself on the big empty bed and flicked on Eli’s vibrator. I touched it to my clit and the intense vibration was a pleasurable but intense shock.

  I ran the head of it, curved to hit the g-spot best, along the outer curve of my large vaginal lips. The richer but less intense sensation was incredible. ‘How did I not know? How does anyone not know?’ I said to no one.

  I shut my eyes, thinking of Eli’s dark hair, his dark eyes. His long, lean body and the feel of his come hitting my skin like drops of sunshine. I ran the tip of the vibe in lazy circles around the outside and then occasionally set the tip to my clit to get that intense buzz. I worked it in my cunt a bit, back out and around, lulling myself into a stunned kind of arousal until it was all too much.

  And just on a whim, I lay the top three inches of the vibe flat along my outer lip and barely moved it in, more like rocked it over my skin. The orgasm that rushed up to consume me was entirely different and bittersweet. I cried for just a second and then started the process over again, finding my own rhythm. Taking matters into my own hand. A goodbye gesture for sweet Eli.

  When I was once again on the precipice, I repeated the move but on the opposite side. I pressed the pink, trembling toy to my outer lip and rocked my hips this time. Just enough to create a sense of motion. And when I came, I shivered like I had a fever.

  I curled on my side and let myself drift off to sleep. Just a cat nap.

  The phone rang and it was my friend Lisa. ‘What are you up to, young lady?’ she asked. We hadn’t spoken in months.

  ‘I’ve been dumped and I have a box full of sex toys,’ I mumbled.

  Lisa laughed, a long slow laugh that said she’d known me too long to let anything I said shock her. ‘Wanna meet me at the Flamingo for a drink in an hour or so? I’m leaving a work meeting that’s running late and figured we could catch up and shoot the shit. You can tell me all about this guy and the sex toys.’

  ‘And the plan and all the sex,’ I said. I sat up, still half asleep and only a tiny bit less sad about the sudden loss of Eli.

  ‘Um ... Wow. You do have a lot to tell me! In an hour?’

  ‘Fine. Yep. I have to get showered and dressed and I’ll be there.’

  ‘Is Miss Jeffrey on tonight?’

  ‘Should be. He never takes a night off. Except Sundays. Sundays are his psychic phone night.’

  Lisa laughed. ‘What a crock.’

  ‘In his defence, he tells people he’s a fake psychic. It’s not his fault they don’t believe him.’

  We hung up and I drank a glass of juice, had a hot shower, freed my hair from the shower cap and put it up in a messy top knot. Jeans and a tunic with some light boots would have to do. I was not interested in looking pretty, just in getting out.

  ‘Now explain this to me again,’ Lisa said. She sipped her dry white wine and wore her smart business suit well. Short to my tall, dark haired to my blonde, pale to my ruddy, we were a work in contrast, but very close friends.

  ‘It was Cloville’s fault,’ I said, sipping my red wine.

  ‘No doubt,’ Lisa said.

  I smiled at her. ‘Argh!’

  ‘Jesus, you still get pirate teeth.’

  ‘Did you think I had new teeth? And I’m not looking to meet anyone, so I don’t care if I have pirate teeth. At least the wine is good.’

  ‘Cheap but good.’

  We clinked glasses. ‘Is there any other way?’ I said, spinning to watch the stage.

  ‘I thought you were going to say like us,’ she said.

  ‘That too.’

  ‘Where is my lovely Cloville Yum-Yum?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Most likely getting into his disco ensemble. He’s doing Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survivetonight. If I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘Look at this one,’ she said. She pointed to a tall drag queen in aqua and pink paisley and white go-go boots. A shocking blue wig hung to her shoulders and long blue lashes curled up from her ornate makeup. Then I yelped.

  ‘Jack!’

  ‘Girlies!’ my brother said and made a beeline for Lisa. Those two had always been as thick as thieves growing up and nothing had changed.

  ‘Oh, my God. Merritt told me but ... but seeing is believing!’ She laughed and clapped and Jack twirled.

  ‘What are you synching tonight, bro? Um ... sis?’

  Jack shrugged and accepted a bottle of water from the bartender. ‘Martha and the Vandellas, Nowhere to Run,’ he did a sixties shimmy-shake and Lisa clapped again.

  ‘I want to be a Vandella!’ Lisa said.

  ‘Actually, that’s why I came out. Timing is fucked and no one can lip sync my backup. How about it girls? You up to it?’

  ‘You want me to lip-sync. In drag?’

  ‘Technically, if you were in drag, you’d be dressed as a guy,’ Jack said.

  ‘Oh ... well, yeah. That’s true.’

  ‘I’m in!’ Lisa said, getting up and taking Jack’s hand as if this were the most normal thing in the world. Dressing in gaudy clothes and big wigs to sing backup for a six foot three man with gas flame blue hair. ‘You coming?’ she said to me.

  ‘Uh ... I don’t know the song,’ I said.

  ‘Everyone knows the song!’ they practically said in unison.

  I blinked. ‘I’m afraid.’ There. I’d said it.

  ‘Of what?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Think back to the freshman year award ceremony when Merritt got on stage.’

  ‘Stage fright,’ Lisa said, smacking her head. ‘You froze and then you tripped!’ she said as if I needed a refresher of the memory.

  ‘I know that!’

  ‘Come on, Merritt,’ Jack said and took my arm. ‘For me. For your brother. You can do it. You’re a grown ass woman now and you’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, trying to believe it and own it like they say you should. I wanted to do it for Jack. I wanted to do it for me. But my voice sounded like I’d been sucking helium and my body felt a bit on the numb side ... maybe I was having a stroke.

  ‘You are not having a stroke,’ Lisa said after one look at me.

  Damn. Did everyone know how to read my mind?

  Chapter Sixteen

  I PUT THE BRAKES ON when we rounded the stage and Jack reached for the backstage door. ‘Wait, wait! I can’t. I can’t!’ I could feel tears pricking my eyes and my heart was damn near ready to burst out of my chest.

  ‘You can. You really can. You’ll be great. You just need to relax,’ Jack said softly. He talked to me the way one would talk to a spooked horse. Smart man.

  ‘I can’t,’ I whispered, tugging harder.

  ‘What was Mom drinking the other night?’ he asked me, completely shifting
gears.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mom. What was she drinking the night she climbed in my cage?’ Lisa looked up, shocked, opened her mouth to speak. ‘Later,’ Jack said. ‘Long story.’

  ‘Long Island Iced Tea. Why?’

  Bubbles came passing through. Tonight she was a vision in shocking lemon yellow with disco ball earrings and jewel-encrusted stilettos. ‘Bubby! A LIT! And make it snappy. We have a nerve emergency.’

  ‘Be right back, baby,’ Bubbles yelled and hurried off.

  ‘A LIT?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘It’s a bar full of men in drag and horny men and curious men and women too. We need to abbreviate as much as possible. It’s like ... a hospital.’

  ‘Yes, Jack,’ I giggled. ‘That’s exactly what it’s like. A hospital.’ I snorted but then Bubbles was filling my eyes with shocking sunshine yellow and thrusting a tumbler at me.

  ‘Drink this. You’ll be fine, honey.’

  I took a sip. ‘I don’t think this is going to work.’

  ‘You have to driiiiiink it,’ she said and tipped the cup so the sweet liquid flooded my mouth. It didn’t even taste alcoholic. Which is why they were so damn dangerous. He tipped about half the tumbler into my mouth, forcing me to spit or swallow. Age-old dilemma. I swallowed.

  A warm kind of euphoria flooded me almost instantly. ‘You can do it,’ Jack said again, hustling me up the three steps. He took the offered tumbler of liquid courage and hauled me backstage.

  Lisa followed behind, taking in every sight and sound of the backstage scene.

  What happened next was a blur. I kept sipping my drink and watching the literal crew of men who rushed at us. It reminded me of a pit crew at a car race. I was stripped, redressed in a complementary paisley dress (my dress accented Jack’s) and white go-go boots. An immense green wig and the makeup ... well, I can’t even begin to describe it. When the crush of burly half-in drag men stepped back, a stranger stared back at me.

  I turned to find Lisa and found my doppelganger, only her wig was hot pink. Dear God. We looked like candy-coated sixties sirens. ‘Wow,’ she said.

  Anxiety curled in my belly but it was swiftly battled by the effects of my drink. ‘Wow is right,’ I said.

  Jack came in, clapping his hands like a headmistress and studied us. ‘My, oh my, you are no drag queen but you are fetching. Good to go, then. We’re on in five.’

  ‘In five minutes I’ll be racing across the parking lot,’ I said and shifted from foot to foot like I had to pee.

  Jack shook his head and handed me the glass. ‘No you won’t, because I’ll tackle your ass. Drink.’

  I drank.

  Nowhere to run ...

  I was in hell. This was hell. This was what Dante wrote about in the Inferno. I stood behind my gyrating brother with one of my best friends at my side. Her hot pink wig shook as mine shimmered around my face, plastic strands of lime green hair invading my mouth and sticking in my frosted pink lipstick.

  You’re no good for me ...

  Jack was lip syncing the shit out of this song and Lisa and I were doing our best to do a good job with the Vandellas backup bits. I missed my queues, ran long and basically willed the stage to open up and swallow me. My dress was a bit too big as it had been sewn with a large-ish man in mind. My boots were so big my feet had slid forward and I was teetering as I did my grand hand gestures. My wig was slipping and my fake lashes were poking my eyes. How did they do this? Whydid they do this?

  Lisa’s wig slipped sideways and she grabbed it on the downward slide. We glanced at each other and my anxiety took the reins. All I wanted to do was run like the wind. A gaudy sixties streak of hair and white leather boots.

  Instead I shook my shoulders and tried to keep up. Then I made the colossal mistake. I jumped a bit too high and stumbled in my boat-sized boots and the whole fucking house of cards came crashing down. My hair slid forward, tangled in my rhinestone eyelashes and then slipped down the front of me like reanimated lime-green road kill. I snatched it when it hit waist level and just held it there. Lisa’s eyes widened and when I heard the snickers from the packed audience, I looked down. Only to realise that my lime green hair now resembled lime green pubichair. Without thinking, I tossed the damn thing over my shoulder and the audience laughed for real this time.

  Inside I shook and shivered, but I kept shaking my groove-thing until Jack did his final dramatic flourish. He turned to me, seething. Lisa turned to me, laughing. I just turned and ran off the damn stage like my ass was on fire.

  Jeffrey was on me before the curtain stopped swinging. He was valiantly trying not to laugh, after all it would make his eyes tear and then he’d run his makeup. ‘Girl ... that was the ...’ He shook his head, biting his lip. ‘No words. I have no words. Now, I’m on. You want to do backup?’ he asked, before cracking up again.

  ‘Stuff it, Cloville,’ I muttered.

  Jeffrey kissed Lisa and told us to wait for him. She went out to watch his performance and I stood there wondering where the fucking pit crew was to get me out of all this crap. A steady stream of people were approaching Jack and I waited. There would be venom spilled when he was done addressing the masses. When he finally came back to me, I held up my hand. ‘I know, I know. I ruined your show. I’m sorry. I told you not to take me up the–’

  ‘Are you kidding? They loved it! Everyone is saying the same thing. So funny. So vaudeville. Good to see the humour back. Merritt! You were a hit!’

  Well, shit.

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t even say that.’

  ‘Say what?’ Here was Lisa again, her bright pink wig perched precariously atop her own dark hair. Jeffrey came down the back steps and we all stood there like some gaudy flock of birds.

  ‘They loved her!’ Jack told her.

  ‘Of course they did,’ Jeffrey said. ‘They love a good laugh. She was great.’

  They all twittered around me and I stood there stunned. ‘You done for the night?’ Jeffrey asked my brother.

  ‘Just the one show. You?’

  ‘Finito.’ Jeffrey hooked one arm through my arm and one through Lisa’s. ‘Let’s all go out. Few drinks. A few laughs. It’ll be fun.’

  Lisa was nodding merrily. I forgot, she wasn’t around us a lot so she was enjoying the sparkling insanity of being around these two. I shook my head no.

  ‘Come on, Merritt,’ Jack said and stomped his size 12 boot.

  ‘Come on,’ Jeffrey and Lisa sang out in unison.

  ‘Fine,’ I sighed. ‘Just let me change.’

  Jeffrey put a hand out to stop me. ‘Oh, honey, it’ll be so much more fun if we go like this.’

  I looked down at myself through the cockeyed bangs of my green hair. I looked like I was wearing my aunt’s kitchen curtain and Herman Munster boots. ‘In this?’

  ‘Sure, it’ll be fun. We’ll go out and get drunk.’ Jeffrey said.

  ‘Speaking of which, hell, shouldn’t I bedrunk? I drank the equivalent of a bottle of hooch.’

  ‘Oh, you did not,’ Lisa said. She grinned at me, loving this whole maniacal scenario.

  ‘It eats right through the booze. The booze is only a temporary fix,’ Jack said.

  ‘What eats right through the booze?’

  ‘Adrenaline, baby,’ Jeffrey laughed. ‘It’s the only way to fly.’

  They hustled me out into the night. It was pretty much a blur until we hit Captain Fred’s Fish and Chips stand. I was drunk as a paisley skunk. We’d hit our four favourite bars and created quite a good natured stir. I dance with Lisa. Jeffrey danced with Jack while I gave a nun-like order that they keep a ruler’s worth of space between them. We all danced together and I even danced with my brother. But when the bars booted us out, Jeffrey turned and said, ‘I could destroy some fish and chips.’

  So there we were, in line and Lisa leaned in. ‘What’s all this business about the sex toy boy who wouldn’t you know ... do you, but he got you off. Fill me in entirely.’

  Drunk and not in an emotional
pain at the moment, I was all for it. I didn’t notice how close we had shuffled to the counter.

  Lisa’s eyebrows went up as we once again moved toward the counter. ‘Really?’ she said when I told her about the clitoris extending under the outer lips.

  ‘Really,’ I said. ‘Did you know the clitoris can actually be up to six inches long?’ She kept shaking her head and shaking her head and shaking her head. ‘What?’

  ‘No. I didn’t,’ said a male voice. ‘Care to tell me more?’

  The fish and chips guy smiled at me.

  ‘Um ...’

  Chapter Seventeen

  HIS NAME WAS MATTHEW and he was gorgeous. Hair a bit too long, the perfect colour of raw cocoa. Brown with just a hint of red lurking in it somewhere. Bright blue eyes that were so pale they somehow almost resembled water. I slipped him my number when he asked and we all sat at the busted and graffiti-covered picnic table to eat.

  ‘You are a mess,’ Lisa laughed, snorking up french fries like the world was going to end soon.

  ‘She’s drunk is what she is,’ Jack said. He had two baskets of fish and chips, a bucket of soda and three fried pies. How did he get his ass in that dress eating that? Bastard.

  ‘That is your fault,’ I reminded him. ‘And yours and yours.’ I pointed at Jeffrey and Lisa too. ‘And I have been a mess since I found Drake banging wienies with the gym coach.’

  Jeffrey choked on his fish and put his head down, broad brown shoulders shaking.

  ‘Dear God,’ Lisa said and shuddered. ‘It’s hot if it’s gay porn, not so hot if it’s your happily-ever-after guy.’

  ‘Gay porn!’ said Jack.

  ‘I am a mess,’ I muttered, ignoring them.

  ‘A hot mess,’ Jeffrey corrected. ‘But never mind that. Stick to our plan. It will free you of the past and put you in the mindset to really see what you want. What you need, girl.’ He sucked at his soda.

  Lisa grinned. ‘Who are you now, Jeffrey? Dr Phil?’

  Jeffrey snorted. ‘Puh-lease. Has Dr Phil ever looked this good?’

  We ditched our trash and handsome, ethereal Matthew yelled out. ‘When can I call you?’