From Jenny to Mei Ch. 28

But before that moment came she stopped her stroke and listened. It was the familiar sound of his downstairs door opening and Mei climbing the stairs. 'Oh well, next time,' she thought and gave Philip's cockhead a kiss while pushing his hip away. "Mei's home and I don't want her to see this," she said, and pushed harder when he didn't seem to get the message. "The last thing she needs to see is you coming on my face."

They waited together on the couch for Mei to enter, giggling a bit and whispering to one another. He asked her advice regarding Mei and Ai told him what he needed to hear. And when ten whole minutes had passed without Mei entering, she pushed him toward the door.

##########

Mei reviewed her evening at the center as she opened the street-level door to Philip's house. It wasn't a productive one. Her interactions with Jerome didn't seem to bring about any progress because, she thought, her irregular schedule may be sending him confusing signals. She felt three days a week weren't going to be enough to help the boy improve and even contemplated adoption for a moment. It was a thought she abandoned quickly as being impractical and one that was too high a price to pay for what was undoubtedly a fantasy. She didn't deny his progress, others had remarked on it too, but what would she do mothering a retarded child for the rest of her life? And while she admitted she was improving as a person, she knew that sacrificing her life to care for this boy would end up tragic for them both.

Contradictory feelings of self-worth had tugged at her psyche on the cab ride back to the Oakland warehouse. But rather than argue with herself she sat in the back and watched the lights pass by the passenger side window listening to her feelings. She let her joy at leaving Dr. K satisfied speak honestly and allowed her sorrow for betraying Philip accuse her. And unexpectedly, as her two halves battled one another, she came to observe herself with some detachment, saw the argument inside herself as though it were two friends bitching at each other.

"Every fucking coin has to have two sides," she muttered, and hoped she didn't attract the attention of the driver.

He was new. A black guy in his thirties. She had turned away from thoughts of herself and looked carefully at the side of his face. He could be Jerome's father. Could be one of the "toothless and ruthless" meth addicts she and her former friends used to laugh at on the curb outside of a club. He could be a good man with a wife and three kids. He could be her lover.

'Would I be an angel for him or a user?' she wondered, as she let a movie play in her mind. 'Would I find a little bit more salvation by blowing him as he drove me home every night or would I crush him, get him fired, and let Jenny chalk up another broken heart?'

Sixty seconds later she had forgotten about him and climbed the stairs as tired as she could remember being.

What would await her? How would she react? Would Philip scorn her for blowing her 'daddy' again or would he ignore her? Would sitting down at the granite countertop and eating his food even be possible without turning into a sobbing wreck?

And what about Ai? Was it all an act with her? Was she after Philip's money after all? If so, she deserved it if only for the quality acting she was doing. 'Are you meowing, little kitty?' she recalled her saying, and couldn't resist the smile that felt terrible spreading along her face. 'That little bitch is either the best thing to have ever happened to me or the worst.'

She stopped halfway up the stairs, removed her shoes and made her way to the top. She turned and sat, trying to prepare herself.

'Two sides - same coin.'

She wanted to be good. She wanted her burdens lifted. She wanted to make amends for her past and be truly reborn as Philip had promised.

'What an asshole. How could I have thought that he would just ass-fuck me into being a sweet little girl? What a moron! You've got to earn your freedom, Mei. You've got to break this shell you're trapped in. You'll never grow unless you kill that bitch you were.'

And it occurred to her that perhaps that was exactly what she was doing with Dr. K. Maybe moaning and cooing and calling him daddy while she sucked that mouth-stretching organ of his was like meditation on self-improvement. Maybe Ai was right that only the ignorant commit sin and that by confronting her daddy issues through fellatio and rigorous cunt stretching she was conquering her ignorance. That the orgasms were more catharsis than indulgence.

Maybe.

She sat, mulling it over, sat until her ass hurt, thought until thinking disgusted her and her stomach demanded to be filled.

"Fuck it," she muttered and moved to stand. Then she stopped. 'Naked or not?' It was the same question as last night. 'Whore or not?'

Before it had been easy. Philip liked her without clothes. Now going in with her ass bare and her boobs jiggling would just be ignoring what she had done and she knew it wouldn't work. They would see the falsity in her smile and confident walk and feel like a fool for trying to act as though everything was normal.

It was decision time. She didn't know what message keeping her clothes on would send. Rebellion? She didn't want to rebel. Fear? She certainly was full of dread but not fear. She thought about calling him and asking, or better still, calling Ai. She would know exactly what to do. But she couldn't.

And then the issue was taken from her. She began to cry.

And even as she cried she castigated herself, convinced that she was taking the easy way out. Knowing that the sobbing and sniffling was just a call for help, to make enough noise that either Philip or Ai would rescue her and make her decision for her. It made her crying that much more real, self-indulgent and more miserably loud.

She heard the door, saw the shaft of light from above cast her shadow on the wall next to her and she knew what a miserable sight she would make turning to look up at him. 'Thank god for drama,' she thought, and hated herself for it. Drama was so Jenny. So unworthy of Philip's princess, so far beneath the growling bitch in heat screaming out her orgasm with his cock in her ass. But that's who she was at the moment and debasing or not she turned to look up at Philip's silhouetted figure at the top of the stairs.

"Mei? Why are you crying in my staircase?"

She stood, began to unbutton her shirt while wiping away tears and said, "Because I'm a whore."

"Hiya, Mei?" she heard from inside the apartment. "C'mon in and let's get drunk again!"

Mei felt the urge to a smile begin to grow but it withered when she looked at Philip's face. In all the times he had dominated her, punished her, scolded and told her she had been a heartless cunt he never cast his face in the form it took now. The sinister shadow added menace to his mood as though it were a scene in a forties detective movie.

She tried to move by him but he took her arm, stooped to reach under her knees and lifted her up without the slightest effort.

"What are you doing?"

She looked at Philip who stared forward and turned to look at Ai for an explanation.

"I'd advise you to keep your mouth shut for the next forty minutes," Ai said from the couch, "unless you've got his dick in it."

"What's...!"

"It's called make-up sex, Mei..." she said, turning back to read her text book, "in my book, it's the best kind."

Rather than throw her on the bed, rip her clothes off and push her face into the mattress as a prelude to a spanking and the delicious anal invasion as she expected, he gently placed her on the bed and placed a finger on her lips as a signal for silence.

He removed his shirt and swiped at the light switch.

"Philip."

He put his finger to his lips and pulled the button tab of his pants.

"I need to pee," she said. "I won't say another word but if I wait it won't be pretty."

She reached for his hand and was pulled out of bed with more force than she had expected. And when she returned, noticing Ai was wearing ear buds, she tried to speak again.

He clamped a firm hand over her mouth and said, "You are going to listen to me and the only thing I want to hear escape your lips are groans and whimpers."

She nodded her head and tried to see into the depths of his eyes, those glorious green eyes, to discover what he was feeling. Was this going to be her catharsis? Was he going to show her his rough side? She hoped so. How much better it would be if he dragged her down the hall and bound her to the pommel horse and nailed her until she wept a puddle below her hanging head. But Ai had said 'make-up sex'. Maybe he would at least gag her while he called her 'whore'.

She felt him tug at her arm to pull her around. She felt his embrace and his move forward to press her calves against the mattress. She felt herself loosen as his arm supported her back and felt her tummy quiver as she descended backward to the bed.

"I love you," he said.

She felt his breath at her chin and his voice in her soul.

"I love you."

She felt his hands on her ribs and his knees at her legs. His words were in a deep baritone. They caressed the meat under her skin.

"I love you."

She let the pressure escape through the tears that wet his hair.

"Philip..."

The sigh wasn't what he wanted to hear, or maybe the bite on her neck muscle was his way of showing passion. She didn't much care.

He kissed her in fifty different places, with fifty different professions all with the same three words. And she felt them melt her bit by soggy bit as her tears opened her heart.

'This could go either way,' she thought, with a moment taken for reflection and sniffles. 'He could either make love to me or grow enraged and use me. And, you know, either is fine.'

"I love you."

"No..." she sobbed.

He bit her again.

"I - Love - You."

His mouth was at her nipple, bared by her bra pulled to the side.

"Don't..."

He ignored her but she understood now was not the time to tell him she wasn't worth loving. And in moments she didn't have the wherewithal to object.

He had unwrapped her, had her clothing spread like tissue from a gift box, and was pushing his erection against her panty-covered hole.

"I love you," he said in yet another way and she heard now what he was saying. "I forgive you," she heard, "I cherish you. I want you, slut that you are. I understand you."

And as his hand pulled aside her panties and his cock found its place, she cried honest tears for the first time that night.

"I love you!" she moaned with her leaking and wounded heart. And as he filled her she said it again. And soon they were trading them, three word packets of understanding, of need and of commitment.

By the time her orgasm arrived the phrase had almost become a real object, as though it were the bed they were on or a raft they were tied to. And she screamed it into his ear and scraped it into the flesh of his back as he erupted inside of her and collapsed on her body, chanting through heavy breaths at her neck. "I love you."

They didn't speak for long, long minutes. And when the silence came, after breath had been recovered and tender kisses applied to sweaty skin, she said. "I hate you for loving me."

"Tough shit," he answered, and she squeezed her legs still keeping him as close inside her as she could.

"I hate hurting you. I could tell you a thousand ways how I'm no good for you, how I'm a wretched skank and how I'll just use you and walk off. But I love you so much it would kill me to lose you."

"I'm a big boy."

She laughed. "You've got to be kidding me?! You're a sweetheart. The quintessential nice guy. You couldn't play the villain on your best day."

"I blackmailed you! Or did that slip your mind? I still am for god's sake."

"Oh please. Sure, I was scared at first. But then you showed me how you love me and then it was just fun. I mean, not that it's always fun but almost always."

"And if I send out those photos?"

"I wouldn't really care. Do you think I've spoken with my friends at all since then? And do they care? Just don't send them to my mother. She wouldn't like you.

"You've shown me what's important, Philip, and for that I owe you. If humiliating me does something for you I'll send the pictures myself."

She paused and breathed deep and for a moment wondered why a grown man had a Minnie Mouse nightlight.

"So this was Ai's idea, huh?" she asked.

"We spoke about it."

Mei lowered her chin to look him in the eye, a signal he interpreted as a request to elaborate.

"She told me to tell you I loved you."

"That's it?"

"Yeah."

"Shit, that girls knows everything. She going to sleep on the couch?"

"Probably."

"And what do I do about...?"

"You're coming to terms with it? The whole daddy thing?" he asked.

She thought for a long few moments wondering under which cup the lie she hid from herself was hiding. Did she even know her motivations? Was she a slut, hungry for big dick and the oddly erotic experience of fucking an old man, or was she really coming to terms with the reality of being abandoned by facing her childhood inadequacy? She really didn't know and discovered a troubling fact. That by answering Philip, by breathing out the words, any words, she would have had made a choice. But which choice? Where would she go? Who would she become? Jenny or Mei?

"I'm learning," she said with a simple confidence.

It felt right. It felt that she had placed her foot on the right path and that, were she to resolutely place another foot down, the rest of her steps would be easier. "He's like a story I'm listening to, a voice telling me about that motherfucking father of mine. Like he is the anti-father, the negative of the man who gave me half my DNA... and nothing else."

"I see," he said, with more resignation than sadness, "it's a good metaphor."

"What, that he's like a story?"

"Yeah. I'd have to ask Ai but I think she would say that each life is a story and until you know your own beginning you can't enjoy the further chapters."

"Or something like that." Mei rolled herself to allow Philip's arms to embrace her. "Did you just site your eighteen year old girlfriend as a reference? Like, a wisdom reference?"

"She's wicked smart. Wiser than I am."

Mei thought in silence for a swallow, a couple of blinks and perhaps forty heartbeats, then told Philip what she thought was a secret. "I'm not sure if I hate that chick or just want to be more like her." She elbowed him gently and got a grunt in reply. "Philip..."

"You two are sisters, right," he said, the sleep thickening his voice, "that's what I heard you say. Do you know sisters that feel any differently than what you just described? Sisters that love each other?"

And that was how Mei drifted off to sleep, not dwelling on what a horrible bitch she was, not lamenting the pleasure of sex with a well hung, kindly, old man, not pledging to never doubt her primary lover — she slept thinking that Ai might be rubbing off on Philip, her wisdom, and thought, with hope, that perhaps she was rubbing off on herself as well.

///////////////////

Many heartfelt thanks to Dan Kildall for his exhaustive toil to pare away errors, pick at misspellings, listen to story ideas that never get written and stick by me even when I am less attentive than a friend should be.