Page 15

“I was behind you. I’m not now. Pick up the towel. You’re hard. I can still see it.”

I look down. He is right. I pick the towel up and I do not wrap it around myself. I hold it at my side.

“I took this phone to the police yesterday,” I say. “The texts. The photo of me on my couch. The screen said unknown. They copied everything. They rang back with nothing. No number they could use. No name. No door they could knock on. I’m calling them again.”

“Do it, I stop talking. You don’t want that. You’re scared, and you still don’t want me to stop. Your cock is already telling me so.”

My mouth goes dry. Tuesday this was a voice on a line. Now the doorway is still open and I can feel where someone stood.

“Tell me what you want to do to me. Say it slowly. I want every filthy word on the record.”

“Wrap your hand around your cock. Look at those photos while you do it. Slow. I want you wet at the head. I want to hear you breathe the way you breathed when I told you I was going to fuck you in your house. Do it, Mr. Preswood. You came here to wash me off. It didn’t work.”

“You’re telling me you were in my building.”

“I’m telling you to touch yourself. One of those makes you drip.”

My thumb sits on the red button. I do not press it. I am angry and I am frightened and I am hard, and none of that is a thing I chose.

I take my cock in my hand.

One stroke, tight. My breath leaves me. I look at the photo of my own back and then at the photo of my own cock, and both of them feel like something I made for him without meaning to.

“Good. Again. Slower. Look at it. Hate that I took it. Come on your own floor. Get it on your hand. Then taste it because I said so.”

“You first.” My voice is not steady. “You want this on the record, keep talking. Noah. These photos. That is a file.”

“Noah wanted you. I watched you cover him. You looked wrecked when you left the building. You went home. Then you came back here to wash. Stroke.”

I do. I hate the sound of it in this empty room. My other hand finds the locker. I am naked. The phone is trapped against my shoulder. The pictures sit on the screen. My back. My cock. That empty door. I keep looking at the doorway between strokes. No grey. No hood. Only the gap he used.

“Faster. You’re close. Stay quiet. Men like you don’t moan. You just come and pretend you didn’t.”

“Fuck you. Come out of that fucking doorway. Stop hiding behind a phone and a mask. If you want my cock, come and take it. Don’t stand in the dark like a coward and tell me to come all over my own floor.”

“No. I don’t come out for you. You come for me. Right here. Right now. Not on this floor when I fuck you. That comes later. Stroke.”

I come.

It hits hard. “Fuck.” I say it into the phone whether I mean to or not. My fist tightens and I spill over my hand, thick, onto the tile, onto my own foot. My knees dip. I keep the phone up. I try to give him nothing else. Another sound comes out anyway, low and filthy, and I hate it. I keep stroking through it because I cannot stop, come sliding down my fingers, cock jerking in my grip until I am shaking and empty and still holding on like a stupid bastard.

I stay there with my head down. Come cooling on my hand. The gym is quiet. I can hear the ice machine in the hall. I can hear my own breath. I can hear how easy it would be for some fucker to still be behind a locker.

I stand. The towel is still on the floor. The doorway is still empty.

“Pretty,” the voice whispers. “Not bleeding. Not yet. Get dressed. I left you something on thirty-seven.”

The line dies.

A text.

Unknown: Go to thirty-seven. Last office. I made it pretty. Come alone.

I get dressed while I am still wet. The shirt sticks to me. I take the stairs. I count the floors so I do not think about those photos sitting on my phone. The same unknown number the police already said they cannot trace.

Thirty-seven is dark except the last office. There is no window on the back wall. The door is not shut.

I look first.