After she lies down, I head to the showers with a change of clothes. With the spray pulsing over the back of my neck, I press my forehead against the wall of the shower and feel like I can breathe for the first time in hours. Clover is okay. She is safe.
But fuck if I don’t see her the moment I close my eyes. Her clit rubbing against the head of my dick. The wet spot she left on my sweatpants. Her lips closing around my finger.
It only takes a handful of pumps before I’ve painted the tile with my release.
When I return, our usual wall of pillows is scattered at the end of the bed. I pull back the covers to see that Clover is wearing gray boy shorts with a thick, masculine-style band around the waist. Her ribbed white tank top is cropped, the seam rolled up just below those gorgeous tits.
I’m already getting hard again. There is nothing to separate us when Clover shifts closer to me and nestles her head in my lap.
“I am a very bad person,” I whisper, like that will somehow absolve me. Because if I were a better person, I would reposition her so that she has pillows to cuddle instead of me. But this moment is too much like ones I had allowed myself to only briefly imagine that day when we saidI do.
She gives a contented sigh as I stroke her hair. At one point, her arm is draped across my thighs, painfully close to my balls that feel too heavy.
I pray for exhaustion, but sleep takes her fucking time and memories of the past start piling up one right after the other.
Sometimes I wish I could talk to Clover as freely as I did when we were just two profile pictures on a screen. It felt simple even though it was anything but.
My foray into catfishing started falling apart when Clover and Beth went to Texas to visit Beth’s older brother and his family two weeks before we were supposed to go back to school.
I’d managed to avoid my Calvin Prep friends for the summer, but they were getting harder and harder to put off, so I figured this was a good time to get them off my back. A group of us spent a few days in and out of each other’s houses, skimming off family liquor cabinets and getting high.
I had passed out one night on a lounge chair next to Val’s pool and she held up my phone to my face because Clover had sent me a steady stream of messages, telling me all about how weird her uncle’s kids were and how the whole family was obsessed with God and guns.
When I woke up a while later, Val was still scrolling through messages and laughing with everyone else rounded up behind her.
I was frozen with fear. They had found out that Clover was my weakness. They knew the things I’d told her. Surely, anyone who read those messages could see what I knew to be true even if I could hardly admit it to myself. Surely, they could see that I was in love with the girl everyone ridiculed and calledthe helpbehind her back.
But then Val turned to me, a wicked grin on her face. “Bennett, this is fucking genius. I can’t believe you’ve spent the whole summer catfishing this poor little fat ass.” She tossed the phone back to me.
My heart stammered in my chest, sweat gathering on my forehead. It felt like swallowing nails, but that didn’t stop me from saying, “Yeah. So fucking gullible, but at least she’s entertaining.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t sent you any nudes yet,” someone said.
Val shook her head. “No, no, you don’t want to get caught with actual pictures. That’s asking for trouble.”
“Totally,” I said. Just the thought of Clover being vulnerable like that made me want to puke.
Everyone began to disperse and returned to their chosen vices.
Val stood and then leaned down to me, giving me a playful slap on the cheek. “Couldn’t let you have all the fun, though, Benny. If you thought those messages were entertaining, just you wait. The grand finale I just cooked up is going to make you jizz your pants it’s so good.”
I laughed, but it came out nervous and breathless.
When she was gone, I opened my phone and nearly threw the thing in the pool. I’d never hit a girl before, but it was a good thing that Val was out of sight, because the feral anger I felt in that moment as I read through the messages to Clover she had penned was unlike anything I had ever experienced.
JOSH
Your mom’s family sounds like a bunch of backward ass hillbillies
CLOVER
lol yeah kind of, but they’re not all bad
JOSH
I get back in town next week
CLOVER
