Author's Note: Chapters 5, 6, and 7 were completed by summer. I'd like to thank the baggage apes at Washington Dulles International Airport who destroyed my external hard drive. That's two drives in two years. Finding the mental energy to reconstruct all that lost work has been hard to do.
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It had been a week since that night I left Joe's body in a deep, deep hole in the north Mississippi woods. So far Michelle hadn't noticed the fact we hadn't run into him on campus in the last few days. I was sincerely hoping she wouldn't notice that until after graduation. If this odd little arrangement of ours collapsed, I didn't want her then developing a conscience and going to the cops with her suspicions regarding what happened. But we were coming up on four weeks "together" this Friday. Things were going so well I was secretly terrified.
Now it was a quiet Wednesday night. Michelle was nose-deep in another text for her Marketing Admin classes, while I was reading another WWII history that had nothing to do with either of the two classes I was taking. Except for the fact Michelle was studying naked except for a black leather collar, and I'd never bothered refastening my pants after she'd decided to refer to an after-dinner blow job as "dessert", we looked like a perfectly ordinary college-years couple. There was nothing to indicate that a week ago tonight I'd committed a very premeditated murder for her sake, and she had no idea I'd done it or had $143,000 in two garbage bags in the garage from it. There'd been a couple hundred above and beyond that, but that was spent at the grocery store. Life goes on, you know.
The phone rang, interrupting my thoughts. "Hello."
"Dave, do you know where Michelle is?" Fuck, it was Joan.
"Actually she's right here. I'm helping her with some computer graphing for a class project. It's got to be PowerPoint '97, and you only have a Mac. Besides, you know she's not great with computers anyway." Michelle looked up and stifled a giggle.
"Uh-huh. Because she hasn't been home a lot lately, her car's usually here, and her ex-boyfriend down in Starkville is wearing out my answering machine looking for her."
"Well, I can tell you where she is right now, but I haven't paid much attention to where she's been for the last few weeks. I've given her a couple rides, something about her Lexus needing to go to the dealer in Memphis when she gets a chance." I wasn't going to go dragging a fifty thousand dollar red Lexus coupe up and down these roads.
Michelle took that opportunity to whisper in my other ear. "Oh, you've given me a lot of rides, and not just in your car. And do I need to refresh Sir's memory on all the places or positions I have been in the last few weeks? Bent over the edge of the hot tub? Doggy style on this living room floor? And when I leaned my head back over the edge of the bed just so I could more easily deepthroat that last inch of your big hard cock?"
I bit my tongue so hard to keep from laughing I think I tasted blood.
"Dave, seriously, if you want to fuck that cokehead skank, that's your business. Contrary to what you may think to flatter yourself, I don't care. But you should know her better than to trust her. If you do fuck her, wear a condom, because the next time we hook up I don't want anything of hers."
"OK, I got it, Joan. Point taken."
"Bye." Click.
Well, that went remarkably calmly, all things considered. Joan was not often so polite.
Michelle looked at me. "Sir, have you ever had a threesome?"
"Actually no. Any particular reason you ask?"
"One of these days when I get better at this, we're going to have a threesome, and it's going to be with Joan. I am going to tie her down and do her while you watch. I'm going to do her hard. She's a fucking bitch, I am sick of her shit, and I think it would be really fucking hot to hurt her. Begging and tears would be nice. Then you're going to fuck me in front of her, and I am going to cum my fucking brains out again and again. She whined to move in with me when you two broke up, it's still my name on the lease, and she now acts like she was doing me a favor by living there just because she cooks sometimes. She can pretend she's not a masochistic little tramp by being an asshole to everyone, but I know her secret now. And of course I'm a masochistic little tramp, but I'll be much nicer to you so I think that should keep me on the totem pole above her. I'm bitchy and competitive like that. "
"OK, now THAT sounds fucking hot. Maybe for our one year anniversary."
"It'll have to be before that, remember? One year will be fall semester next year, and we all go our separate ways in May, well..."
"Well what?"
"I don't think I'll be in a rush to go my separate ways from you."
Wow. Every time I thought I had a handle on this. "Michelle, I thought this was..."
"You thought I was using you."
"I didn't know what you wanted. We've played a lot and been avoiding a lot of deeper conversations. I've just been trying to keep your mind off the drugs. That was the original goal."
"You've done a great job of that. With the rushes I'm getting, I don't miss coke, and I'm relaxed and happy enough the rest of the time I don't miss weed. My grades have even gone up. So we'll avoid this conversation too, for now. But just keep in mind, even a barely reformed slut junkie like me can be particular about what guys she allows to do certain things to her. And when you get that particular, it's an emotional decision."
"Michelle-"