Long Shot (11 page)

She giggles, albeit a little sleepily, and props herself up. “Lay down. Now.”

Meredith rolls out of the way, beautiful breasts swinging and all I want to do now is bury myself in them, but I obey like a good boy. I shove every pillow behind me for a good view, but she’s back to wagging her finger at me.

“You’re going to do it blind.”

“Ooo.” I mean, watching is my favorite, but that’s something erotic about not knowing what comes next. I shove the pillows aside and lay flat on my back.

Meredith straddles me and leans down to kiss me. She sucks her taste from my tongue and I groan against her mouth. I love a good blow job, but I can’t shake the thirst to be inside her.

Slowly, she kisses down my neck and collarbone, across my chest and past my abs. Every kiss comes slower, and slower, and even slower still. At this rate, my cock is about to explode, and I feel a frenzy brewing.

Another few seconds pass, and I no longer feel her on me. The sound of rustling fills the air, and my fantasies kick into high gear. Sex toys? Bondage? I’m up for whatever, really.

Her hands finally touch my dick, and I start picturing John Cena to keep from exploding in her face. They are soft and firm and move as if they know exactly what they are doing.

Things suddenly get weird. Her hands are replaced by something that feels really odd, indescribable really, so I’m pretty convinced it’s bondage, and my earlier enthusiasm is replaced by trepidation.

Unable to resist, I sneak a peek.

“What the fuck?” She’s got a goddamn Build-A-Bear outfit on my cock, safety pins in her mouth. “Seriously?”

“What?” She has the audacity to look surprised.

“What the hell are you doing?” I can already feel my sex drive slowly dying. “I thought we were having sex, and you’re hosting costume fittings?”

“Look, I needed to see how these fit and since you’re so impressive…”

I shove myself up into a sitting position and cover my goods with my hands. “All of this was just so you can measure a cockfit? That’s what a dildo is for! I know you have one.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Please,” I snort, feeling… betrayed? “Every girl has one. How could you do this to me?”

“I was going to finish you off once I got it sized!” Now she’s looking at me like I’m the crazy one. As if she’s not trying to play dress up after I just gave her a great orgasm to relieve her stress.

“Oh,” I snort and the anger starts to kick in. “You could have told me about this beforehand, you know. Relationships are about communication and honesty, Mere.”

Her turn to snort. “You’re calling me insincere because I didn’t ram your cock down my throat?”

“This is supposed to be time for us, not for someone else’s dick!” I am fully flaccid now, fucking awesome. I grab my pants and jab my legs in them like the daggers I want to hurl into something solid. “Why are you thinking about another dick when I’m making love to you?”

“I didn’t! It’s just business!”

“Business?” My jaw goes slack. “Our lovemaking is just business? What? I… I can’t… Merie, I fucking
love
you and you’re using me as a dummy!”

It gets quiet for a minute as the reality of what I said sets in. She turns bright red and won’t look at me in the face.

“You don’t mean that,” she finally says, quietly.

“Mean what, that I love you?” A stunned laugh escapes my lips and I rub my hair with both hands like I’m trying to grasp some reality in this nightmare. “I don’t say things if I don’t mean them. I love you, Meredith. But this… this is not okay.”

Does she not feel the same way? I mean, this wasn’t how I meant to tell her, but… shit!

She sniffs and draws herself up tall. “I love you, too, you shithead. But you have to understand, this is what I do now! This is my freaking lifeblood. I don’t like it, but it’s what I have to do. It’s just for the money. It’s not for forever, but right now, this is what I do!”

“Well. Now you know how it feels to be a stripper.” Her confession of love, although relieving, loses something when paired with “you shithead”. “I need to go.”

“Wait!” Meredith tries to block my exit from the room, but I brush past her and storm down the stairs, not giving any fucks about who is or isn’t in the house. “Rob, please! This isn’t… it’s not what you think! Okay?”

“You can’t think you’re better than everyone else and pull that shit up there.” I jab a finger towards her room. I can’t even look at her. “I’ll call you later.”

“But…”

I slam the front door behind her and jump into my car, slamming that door behind me, too. It takes three seconds to start the car, throw it in reverse, and get the fuck out of there. Her betrayal feels heavy, pressing, and I can’t concentrate on anything without feeling explosive.

The ride home is nothing but a blur. I slam every door behind me on my way in. Peter is sitting in the living room naked, a beer in one hand and the remote control in the other.

“How’s Mere—”

“Shut the fuck up, Peter.”

I slam my bedroom door, too, and collapse into my bed where I scream and punch the pillow until every drop of energy leaves my body.

Y
ou know
those mornings where everything would be so much better if you could just sleep until the following week? Not so much a do over, but almost like a full hard reset? Instead of a battery pull, you just sleep until everything disappears and you start over.

What I actually want, more than anything, is to wake up in Hawaii, in a tiny bungalow in the rainforest, with a heaping bowl of coconuts and mangoes waiting for me in the kitchen and the roar of ocean waves drowning out the rest of the world. Then I’ll wonder why I had such a weird dream about strippers, and Missouri, and little costumed weiners. I’ll drink some kona and head down to the beach.

Neither of those things happen when I wake up in my tiny pullout in my sister’s office, with Miranda and Joe making some kerfuffle next door, that I was certain wasn’t sex and probably wasn’t another giant broken armoire, but still enough noise to make me wake up before I want to.

After my huge fight with Rob, where we may or may not have admitted feelings of love to one another, I spent all night drinking prosecco and editing dick pics to pretend the fight didn’t actually happen. It was a ridiculous fight, anyway. He actually said the words, “Now you know what it’s like to be a stripper”, which is totally absurd, because I’m not taking off my clothes and exploiting my genitalia for money. I’m just taking pictures of
other
people taking off their clothes and exploiting their genitalia. My clothes stay on. So there’s a difference.

I’m not entirely certain how sold I am on that line of defense, either, but it’s currently all I’ve got.

I stare up at the popcorn ceiling and wish futilely that yesterday hadn’t happened. I don’t exactly know how to fix things.

What I should likely do is apologize. Rob was really hurt last night, and as much as I try to avoid it, I’m crazy about him, and I don’t want him to be mad at me. I mean, he did rock my world before I interrupted things to try on dick costumes. I just didn’t have a real dick to try it on, and I was
not
going to ask Bobby…

Time to be a big girl, Mere.

Before I even swipe my phone open, it’s clear something is afoot. There are approximately eleventy billion notifications filling up my lock screen and no fewer than three missed calls from my mother, whom I haven’t spoken to in weeks, because she can’t ever know what I’m doing unless I want to be cut out of the will.

Text message upon text message upon text message. From friends I haven’t talked to in months. Friends I haven’t seen since college.
Grandma
.

Gloom settles over me seeing his name on the list. My privacy settings don’t show the actual message on my lock screen and I don’t think I can bring myself to swipe it open and read the huge list of messages. What if someone’s hurt? What if someone’s in the hospital? What if my grandpa died?

But why would all these people, including Grandma, be messaging me? Jane would have just woken me up and told me, right?

I drop the phone on my bed and stare at it, trying to telepathically divine what the chaos is about without actually reading any of it. I’m actually disappointed when it doesn’t work.

Jane appears in the door after knocking, a huge cup of coffee in hand. “I haven’t heard you screaming, so I guess you haven’t heard yet?”

“My phone looks like I dropped off the map for a month.” I gesture to it but don’t pick it back up. “Is someone hurt? Please tell me grandpa is okay.”

Jane’s whole face becomes a thing of pity and my stomach drops. She holds out the cup of coffee. “I’ve already spiked it. You’ll need it.”

I take a tentative sip, but my heart is thudding in my ears and I feel lightheaded and I’m prepared to hear that all of my friends died in a car accident, because what else could it possibly be? The coffee burns my throat, and I take another big sip, trying to still the butterflies in my stomach.

“It’s much worse than all that, darling.”

“What can possible be worse than something happening to gramps?”

There’s that pity again. “Your penis photography business has gone viral.”

There’s a loud ringing in my ears, so I don’t think I heard her right. There’s no way I heard her say what I think she just said. I take another sip of coffee. Jameson, give me strength.

“I’m sorry, Jane. I thought I just heard you say that my penis photography business went… went viral.”

Jane presses her lips together in a tight, thin line and nods. “Mom has been calling all morning, but I thought you might want to talk to her yourself…”

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” If I weren’t holding scalding hot coffee, I’d throw the mug across the room, because I need to throw something, anything. “SOMEONE PUT MY SHIT ON THE INTERNET?”

“Yeah, about that… never mind. Yes, your picture is with it and everything. Oh, Mere, I’m so sorry.”

I bury my face in my hands and try to remember to breathe, but tears are coming hot and fast, and I can’t remember how to do anything right now, besides scream or break things or possible hurl myself off a cliff.

“But! But!” Jane gets that whole jazz hands thing going, trying to catch my attention. “Are you ready for this? Everyone loves it.”

“I hate you,” I mumble between my hands.

“I’m serious! Mere, your dick pics have taken off! ZapFeed and PuffPost both published an article about it and it’s already at like 500,000 views. Each. Since this morning. Social media is blowing
up
about it. It’s just, you know, everyone knows it’s you.”

“Mom’s going to kill me.” I chug the rest of the coffee. “You should have left the coffee behind and just brought me the bottle and a bendy straw.”

“It’s still early.” Jane shrugged. “Are you okay?”

“No.” I can’t show my face anywhere ever again. Five hundred thousand views
already
? That’s insane. That’s ridiculous. That’s… okay, kind of awesome that something I did is blowing up so quickly, but no one was ever supposed to know about this! This, and dating a stripper, were supposed to be my dirty little secrets! I would take them to the grave! And now? Now my dirty laundry is aired everywhere. I won’t even be able to go grocery shopping without people knowing me as “the penis girl”.

Kill me. Someone, just kill me.

“Everyone loves it, baby girl. That’s amazing! You may get extra work from this!” Jane is really trying to make this shitfest sound great, and I want nothing to do with it.

“TEMPORARY!” I yell, hurling a pillow across the room. “This was supposed to be TEMPORARY. No one was supposed to know I did this! Mom is going to write me out of the will! Grandma is going to have a heart attack. It’ll kill her. I’m going to be responsible for the death of my own grandmother.”

“Actually.” Jane is now stifling a smile, which makes me want to straight murder her. “Grams called this morning, and she loves it.”

I freeze. “What?”

“She was particularly smitten with the King Henry shot. Said it was very classy.”

“Oh my god, are you laughing right now, Jane? Please tell me you are not laughing, because I’m certain I will kill you with my own bare hands.”

She holds up her hands. “I’m just saying, it could be a lot worse.”

“Worse?” I shriek. “My name is currently circulating around the internet with my photo side-by-side with a bunch of dicks! This is literally the worst! If
only
Grandpa was in the hospital. But no, now my entire graduating class knows I costume cocks for a living!” I heave myself down on the bed again.

“Our ninety-year-old grandmother loves your work, Mere. She said it reminded her of her ‘glory days’, whatever the hell that means. How is that not funny?”

I pull the remaining pillow over my face and wonder if I could suffocate myself. “I’m dead. My career as a serious photographer is over. Goodbye, Annie Liebovitz. ‘Twas a nice dream while it lasted.”

“Okay.” I feel Jane sit on my bed and she pats my legs. “I’ll give you some time to process all this, because I know it’s a big deal, but the world will not end with this. I promise.”

A thought crosses my mind and I sit up, ramrod straight. “Jane. Who wrote the article?”

Now her face is carefully blank, which just makes me feel like I’m going to fall over. This cannot possibly be good. It can’t be… I mean, there’s no way he’d…

“I think you should find out yourself.”

That was all the answer I needed. “He fucking didn’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.” Jane holds up a finger as she dances slowly out of my room. “If you need more booze, just holler and I’ll bring you the bottles.”

“You may as well bring them now,” I whisper behind her and finally reach for my phone.

Opening the article feels like the absolute last thing I would ever want to do, especially now that I know what’s in there. And judging from my list of notifications,
everyone
knows, including my mother whom I must now commit seppuku for.

It is the only way.

Taking a deep breath, I slide my finger across the screen and wince when the home screen pops up. I don’t even know where to begin. Every social media app I own has at least one hundred notification tags attached to it, some higher than others. I have six voicemails, ten missed calls, and fifty—FIFTY—text messages. I’m already overwhelmed and I haven’t opened anything.

I finally decide that I need to know what I’m dealing with before I read any responses, so I pull up the internet browser, type in my name, and hold my breath while the search results load. Oh my hell, it’s everywhere.

THE NEW FACE OF DICK PICS?

MEET THE NEW PENIS GURU

THE FACE BEHIND THE NEWEST PENIS PHOTOGRAPHY FAD

The first article confirms it—Rob Callas is the contributing writer.

I am going to murder him. Rob, you are so fucking dead you have no fucking idea. You know what? I’m
glad
he left with blue balls last night. If I were a witch, I’d curse him with blue balls every day for the rest of his miserable existence.

I hope Jane knew I wasn’t kidding about that bottle, because I am far too sober for this article. There are even photos of me taking photos of dicks, like he snuck the picture in during one of my sessions, so I can’t even pretend that it was another Meredith and they pulled the wrong photo up.

A thought strikes me, and I google Rob’s name. Thankfully, blessedly, nothing remotely resembling a strip club appears in the search results.

Okay, so no one will know that I know a stripper and start connecting the dots. Okay, that’s one less thing I have to die over.

Only one thing, though. Grandma really likes this stuff? Disgusting!

The article, objectively, is surprisingly good. He talks about my dreams to be a bigtime portraiture artist, my inspirations, the dedication that goes into editing, blah blah blah. It’s well written and obvious Rob has a lot of journalistic talent. That shithead.

He all but sliced open my veins and spilled them across the entire internet. He violated such a huge, secret piece of me that I don’t think I can ever look at him again. Being good is one thing, violation is completely different. This was not his story to tell.

I call him, and when he answers, I simply scream as loudly and longly as I can before hanging up.

I finally move through the rest of my notifications, while my phone keeps erupting with a million different phone numbers I don’t recognize. I only answer one, and when I realize it’s a reporter, I stop answering.

In the kitchen, mixing a Bloody that won’t even be as good as The Traitor’s, I try to bring myself to the phone call I know I need to make. I need to call my mom and do some serious damage control, but that means admitting that I’m actually a penis photographer, and I don’t think I’m ready to do that yet.

“How’s it going?” Jane asks tentatively, reaching for the Worcestershire. I scowl at her and move my glass closer to me. “It was a good article, right?”

“That is not the point!” I nearly spit. “He raked me through the coals! He exposed me! I’m going to kill him!”

“I mean, okay, he outted you, but look at all the publicity you’ve gotten!” Jane actually looks like she’s buying the shit she’s selling. “I saw a few comments on an article from different agents, asking you to contact them for representation.”

I glare at her and pull out my phone again (seven missed calls from Rob) and check my email. In the last twenty minutes that I’ve been down here, I’ve received no less than five emails from different agents, asking about representation. My jaw drops.

Okay, Rob is still extremely dead and I extremely hate him, but I’ll turn this into a golden opportunity if it kills me. If an agent wants me for my dick picks, so be it. I have to start somewhere, and this appears to be my somewhere. But there will be caveats and I’m not spending the rest of my life filming dicks, period.

Dear God, could this actually be my ticket out?

“This is all besides the point.” I add a glug more vodka to my glass, taste it, then add a second. “He betrayed me. He exposed me. And I will hate him forever.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little—”

“Can’t hear you.” I shove the phone up to my ear. “I’m calling our mother to beg for mercy.”

Jane frowns, but leaves me alone to make the most embarrassing, awful phone call of my life.

“Hi, Mom.”

“
Meredith
.” I wince and brace myself for the onslaught, but she just sort of sighs. “If you needed money, you could have just asked.”

“This isn’t about the money,” I say, but that’s a total lie. “Okay, it is. Look, I just needed to get back on my feet and this opportunity presented itself. I had
no idea
that it would ever go online.”

“Do you sleep with the men you photograph?” Oh, the judgement in her voice. I wanted to hide under my bed and never come out.

Instead, I take another sip of my salad course. “God, no. I’m not a prostitute. I’m a photographer. I don’t sleep with any of the penises I photograph. If anything, it makes me less interested in penises.”

“You spent all those years in school just to take pictures of… of penises all day?” She practically screeches on the phone, and I pull the phone away from my ear, taking another drink. At this rate, I’m going to be drunk before I’ve been up for an hour. Well-deserved, I believe.