thursday is his night. it’s been his night since the second month, when darius from econ mentioned at a party that marcus had a couch. a couch, darius said, and a pretty specific opinion about the kind of girl he liked. darius sits next to me in lecture and copies my problem sets and then acts like he invented the curve. marcus is thirty-two, black, straight, and says so without being asked. i’ve decided i respect that. he’s only into femmes. i am, very specifically, a femme. we figured that out in about four minutes. then he told me the thursday thing and i said yes before he finished the sentence. he said it plain. thursdays, his place, eight o’clock. come dressed. i was already planning.
so this is thursday. i get there around eight. the hallway carpet is the color of wet sand and the elevator takes forever. i bring my own knee pillow now, the little round one from target that lives in my bag. the first few times i came home with a rug-shaped bruise on each kneecap. fifteen dollars solved it. he watched me pull it out of my bag that first week and said nothing. the next week the couch was four inches closer to the rug. it’s still there. i’ve never moved it back.
he usually has the game on, sometimes netflix. last week it was a cooking show where a man cried about risotto for eleven straight minutes. his feet were on the coffee table and a beer was sweating on the end table. a bowl of cheese puffs sat there too, which i’m not allowed to talk about because i’m the one who buys them. the apartment smelled like the candle he never lights.
i do the thing i always do first. i stand by the arm of the couch and wait. i fix my hair with both hands before i take my spot. stupid. he’ll have it ruined inside ten minutes. black lace bodysuit with the snaps at the hip, thigh-highs, and the little white apron from the thrift store on campus. the apron reads as a joke until it doesn’t. i keep quiet until he looks over. he finishes whatever the man on tv is saying. then he turns his head and looks at me the way he’d look at a menu he’s already decided on.
“come here,” he says, and i come.
i get down between his knees on the pillow. it’s thin and the floor is old hardwood, and i can feel every board through it. he hooks two fingers in the snap at my hip and tugs me closer. a few inches. until my shoulders are against his thighs. the lace pulls tight across my chest. then his hand comes down on top of my head, palm warm through my hair, fingers curled loose against my scalp.
“stay there,” he says.
i stay there.
the apron check comes right about then, every week, like a show intro. his thumb hooks the strap where it crosses my shoulder and straightens it, the way you’d straighten a picture frame. he looks at the whole production of me kneeling between his feet. lace, straps, thigh-highs, cheap white apron. a full beat.
“you wore the apron through the parking lot,” he says.
“yes.”
“someone saw you at the light.”
“let them.”
“mm.” that’s the whole exchange, every thursday. the mm comes from the back of his throat, short, and it means the strap is straight and the parking lot did its job. six months of thursdays and it’s still the best review i get anywhere. he looks at the set and keeps looking, long enough that my knees start to feel the floor. then his hand goes back on my head and he turns to his show.
he’s already half-hard. he’s been half-hard since before i got here, probably. he’s in sweats and a t-shirt, same as always. i get my hand around the base of him. he’s thick, heavier than he looks sitting on the couch. i have to adjust my grip before i can do anything useful. i run my hand up the length twice, slow, thumb dragging through the wet at the tip. then i put my mouth on him, just the head, tongue flat against the underside where the vein runs. i work it in small circles. the skin there is soft and hot and tastes like salt and something heavier underneath. he makes a sound low in his chest that has nothing to do with the tv.
on the screen the risotto man holds a spoon up to the camera like it’s a religious object. i’m watching marcus’s face in the blue light. different thing entirely.
i take more after that. a few inches, pull back, a few more, letting my jaw get used to the stretch before i try for anything deeper. the corners of my mouth ache where the width of him pushes them. spit collects thick and runs down over my knuckles, and the taste of him sits at the back of my tongue, salt and skin and something warmer. his hand presses down harder on my head with each pass. the weight of it settles. it tells me where he wants me.
“good girl,” he says, quiet, to the top of my head, right where the hair is parted and still damp from the walk up.
that’s the first time. it goes through my chest and settles under my ribs and stays there the rest of the night. he says it once and goes back to watching. the quiet after it sits there as long as it needs to.
i go down slow after that. all the way, nose in the hair at the base of him, throat full, and i hold it a beat longer than comfortable. my eyes water immediately. i can feel the shape of him in my throat, the pulse going under my tongue. my throat clicks when i swallow around him. his hand is flat on the back of my skull. then i pull off fast, gag once, spit stringing from my lip to the head of him and breaking onto the bodysuit. i put myself back down before i’ve really breathed.
that’s the rhythm he likes. down, hold, off, breathe, down again. by the third time through my jaw aches in a way that tells you you’ll feel it on the bus tomorrow. i’ve stopped treating the ache as a cost. it’s the only proof i get, and i collect them. yes, i know how that sounds. i’m keeping it.
his hips start moving under me, small thrusts up into my mouth that he isn’t fully in control of anymore. his hand tightens in my hair. i keep my tongue flat and work the head hard on every pass up, cheeks hollowed, spit making it loud. the wet sound fills the quiet room. every time it does, his hips push up again. there’s a thread of it hanging off my chin and swinging with the motion.
“stay,” he says, no “there” on the end this time, and i find out what the difference is about four seconds later.
he pushes me down another half inch, past the point where i thought i had room, and holds. my throat is completely full. the head of him sits at the back of it and my eyes go hot and useless. my hands are flat on his thighs for balance. i can feel him working there, and my whole body wants to pull away and my mouth won’t let it. his other hand is on the back of the couch. the tv keeps going. somebody on it is eating pasta and making a face like it’s the best thing that ever happened to them.
“that’s it,” he says. then, “look at you.” his voice has dropped into the register he saves for the end. “my pale girl, right there on the floor for me.”
i look up. his fingers are in my hair, dark against the pale of it, the lamp catching the gold on his watch. his face has gone tight and focused. he’s watching me take it like it’s the only thing in the room worth watching. the screen, the man with the spoon, all of it gone. then, dry, almost to himself: “every week. all dressed like that. sitting in traffic with an apron in your bag. for a show you don’t even watch.”
“for you,” i say, when he lets me breathe.
“yeah,” he says. four letters, no punctuation. i’d frame it if he’d let me take it home. “again,” he says, and i go again. behind me the tv murmurs. his hand stays where it is.
the orgasm comes in three hard pulses. he doesn’t warn me. his grip goes tight and he holds me down through all of it. i swallow around him, throat working, trying to keep up with the pace he’s set. i can feel him jerking against my tongue, thick and hot, and i keep my mouth sealed so nothing gets past. i don’t pull off. pulling off right then would feel like losing something. he groans something that isn’t a word anymore. when his hand finally eases on my hair i’m still swallowing through the last of it, chin and the front of the bodysuit soaked.
i sit back on my heels and clean my mouth with the back of my hand. the apron is hopeless. there’s spit on the lace and a wet patch low on the bodysuit that has nothing to do with spit. my jaw won’t close all the way yet.
he exhales, long, and looks down at me. he reaches down and runs his thumb along my bottom lip, once, wiping away something i can’t feel anymore. then he taps the cushion beside him.
“up.”
i climb up. my knees complain the whole way, stiffness setting in already. i sink into the cushion next to him. my wet hair is stuck to my face. the snaps are undone at one hip where he tugged them. he tucks me under his arm without looking, the way you’d settle a cat, and picks up his beer. it’s gone warm. he drinks it anyway.
we watch the rest of the risotto episode. the man cries again. marcus laughs once, low, at something i don’t catch, and his thumb moves against my arm in small slow circles. my mouth tastes like him and warm beer. the thigh-high is twisted at the knee and i leave it. i can hear his breathing slow down over the ads.
i know all his shows now. i didn’t at first. cooking shows, a couple of crime dramas, and the one with the singing dogs that he will not admit to liking. over the months i’ve learned the order he watches them in. which ones he pretends to be annoyed by. which ones he watches with his mouth slightly open. he has a whole life on that screen that doesn’t involve me. on thursdays i get to be part of it, on the couch, head on his shoulder, sticky jaw, no real idea what the plot is. his thumb keeps going on my arm. i count forty-one circles before i lose track.
around ten he reaches for the remote. that’s the signal that i can go. i stand up and adjust the bodysuit. i pick the apron off the floor where it landed. i tell him see you next thursday. “same time,” he says, flat, the way he says most things. i let myself out. the deadbolt goes behind me before i’m down the first step.
in the bathroom at the bottom of his building i wash my face and rinse my mouth twice. then i look at my reflection under the bad fluorescent light. the paper towel is the rough brown kind and it leaves fuzz on my chin. my jaw is sore. my lips are a little swollen. there’s a faint red mark on my right knee from the pillow edge, which i think is a perfectly fine thing to have on a thursday. i look like a girl who got exactly what she came for. i have a standing appointment to keep being one, which is more than most girls get and exactly as much as this one needs.
i get home and text darius a single thumbs up. he sends back “did he finally say the thing about the curve” and i don’t answer that.
next week i’ll bring the pillow again. i’ll pack it wednesday night, check the snaps twice, and stand by the arm of the couch until he looks over.
