Too much pussy. It's my cross to bear.
But Katherine is different from all of those other girls. She never wanted anything to do with me, writing me off as some kind of filthy manwhore. That fact makes me respect her as a good judge of character, since it's pretty accurate.
That's why I could have shit my pants when I get a text from her offering up one night at a hotel. I am sure it's a joke, but it's a week before graduation and Brighton is quiet and it's a night I'm bored anyway so I figure, what did I have to lose?
When she walks through the door of the hotel looking nervous as hell, I can't believe my eyes. She stands there in this short-sleeved black dress that hangs past her knees and these matronly black heels that make her look like a PTA mom. And a headband. I mean, we're eighteen, for fuck's sake. What the hell kind of adult woman wears a headband?
I've screwed models, actresses, and socialites. A girl wearing a headband and a dress the size of a tent should not light up my radar in any way, shape, or form. But for whatever the hell reason, it's the hottest thing I have ever seen.
I stare at her, for once without anything smart-assed to say. But my dick has a mind of its own. All the blood leaves my head and rushes to my cock. I'm hard as a rock. Apparently I have a thing for girls that wear headbands and weird-ass ultra-conservative dresses that show zero skin.
She pushes me over the edge when she opens her damn mouth. "So I decided before I leave Brighton next week, that I want to see what all the fuss is about."
The only thing I can think is that it's the ones who look like her, proper and conservative, who are the wildest in the bedroom.
That's a fact.
It's all that repressed crap they have going on. Or daddy issues or whatever. Who knows? All I know is that I'm about to get with the most untouchable, most repressed chick in the history of the world. It's like I've hit the goddamn lottery.
When I put my mouth on hers for the first time, it's fucking magic. I can't describe what she tastes like except that it's everything that's right with the world. Then Katherine breaks away for a moment and looks at me.
She looks at me with contempt. She despises me. But when she kisses me...she kisses me like she hates me and wants me more than anything.
It's just another lay. So what if it's the Holy Grail of hook-ups? So what if it's going to be the best kind of hate sex imaginable? It's when I'm about to put my cock inside her that she tenses me up and gives me a look. I've got enough sense to know what the hell that means. I'm not interested in taking some chick's virginity -- virgins are clingers, and that's the last thing I want.
Then Kate (that's what I called her that night -- Kate, not the proper Katherine like she is at school, but Kate when I'm inside her, Kate when I'm coming so hard that my head is going to fucking explode) asks me if I'm going to screw her or what.
There's good sex, and then there's sex where the memory takes up permanent residence in your brain, changes the fucking chemical balance or something so that you crave it like a damn fix. It makes you jones for it, gets under your skin like an itch. That's the kind of sex this is.
Katherine, prim and proper Katherine in the morning, sneaks out of the bed the next day. She tries to creep out of the hotel room, but I wake up as she's near the door and look at her in disbelief, not that she's leaving, but that I fell asleep and she's the one who's awake.
Most guys will fuck and fall right asleep. Not me. I'm lying there wide awake, counting the minutes of cuddling required to preserve my reputation before I can slide out of bed and get the hell on with my life. Waking up in the morning to watch a hook-up of mine about to slip out the door isn't exactly a regular occurrence.
"Thanks," she says, opening the door to leave. Her hair is still mussed and the dark eyeliner smudged around her eyes makes her look sexier than she did last night.
Thanks? Who the hell says that after a hook-up, especially after a fuck like that? I don't know what to say, so I just grunt and turn over in bed, listening to the door close behind her.
It's just a screw, right? No big deal.
Except I can't get her out of my head.
It should be one for the record books. I should Brighton Bingo that shit and rub it in the face of each one of those dumb jocks: I bagged Katherine Harrison and, even better, punched her v-card. But I don't say anything.
With all the pre-graduation stuff going on, it's easy to be busy, but even so, I swear she's laying low, avoiding me. And I avoid her right back. Hit it and quit it, that's my philosophy. What I'm thinking about the whole time is how I really just need to bang some other girl to erase the memory of Kate. Wipe the slate clean.
But I don't. It just festers, eating at me like some kind of disease.
The only reason I show up here with my mother at all is because I just can't help myself. I have this perverse need to see the look on Katherine's face when she sees me.
It's worth the effort. Katherine just looks so....pissed off when she sees me. She looks at me like I'm pond scum. But I can't stop thinking about fucking her.
I'm through a second cigarette by the time I'm finished stewing over Katherine, and I'm about to light up a third when a voice from the sidewalk makes me look up.
"Hey Caulter!" The man in wrinkled cargo pants, messenger bag lying on the sidewalk at his feet, brings the camera to his face and clicks.
I light my cigarette and take a drag on it as he continues to click away, before I give him the finger. I make a point of standing there unmoving, flipping him off, while I take one more drag, put it out, and grind the butt of it into Senator fucking Harrison's perfectly manicured lawn.