Maggie 6-3 (Patreon)

Max awoke with the sound of his name. When his eyes opened, he saw that the gallery lights were on. The talk was over, or at least on a break, and the attendees were standing, some talking, some filing up the aisle to exit out the main doors. Dr. Yingxu Peng-Sheng gathered papers at the podium.

Max darted his chin forward and looked around. Ken stood over him, hand on his chest, tapping him, saying, “Max, what are you doing here?”

He had trouble waking, trouble moving his mouth, a heavy torpor weighing on him, sleep trying to claw him back to its world. He had slumped in his seat and he dug his elbows in the armrests and lifted himself higher.

“Ken,” he said, “Hey, Ken. I came here to see you.”

At Ken’s elbow the other student he’d sat with loitered, hands in pocket, blankly surmising Max. The two of them stood in the aisle, Ken bent over with a hand resting on Max’s shoulder now.

“Came to see me?”

“Yeah, I was in San Diego, and I saw your Instagram.”

Ken stood and turned to his friend, said, “This is Max. He’s marrying my sister.” Then to Max, “Max, this is Brian. He’s at Stanford with me, in the program.”

Max stood up and rubbed his cheeks, tucked in his shirt. After they shook hands, Max said to Ken, “Well, I thought since I was here, I could come and talk to you ...”

Ken’s face was expressionless but his brow lowered. “What about?”

Max could tell that he already knew what it was about. There was something between them that needed to be discussed. Up to this point it was safe to assume that Ken hadn’t wanted it to be discussed. Max said, “I don’t know,” and held Ken’s gaze.

Ken said, “Brian and I are on our way to lunch.”

Max said, “Sorry, maybe I could just get you a coffee. Ten minutes.”

Ken turned to his friend Brian, they looked at each other strangely, a conversation passing in their eyes, then without speaking a word to Brian, Ken said to Max, “Okay. Ten minutes. But we have to eat, Brian and I, and we want to go to the CRISPR talk at one o’clock.”

Max said, “Ten minutes.”

* * *

“So I hear you and Max were very busy last night.”

Max must have been bragging on their car ride this morning. They indeed had an epic evening of debauchery. “We were busy all night long.”

“Aw, you and my little buddy?”

“It was nice,” she said. Her hand worked with energy, white pastel putting the finishing touches on a drawing of Cole. The white put the highlights on, gave his body a slippery electric charge. Much like what she felt when she drew him.

This was the fastest she’d ever drawn. Her heart beating furiously in accompaniment as she grew excited to finish her work, wanting to see the final product, wanting to commit to paper the incredible sight that she recorded with her eyes. The only sound in the room had been the pastels on the paper. In her ears however had been the most pressing drumbeat. A swoosh-swoosh of her furious little heart. Cole was so incredibly handsome, and it tingled her fingertips to press pencil point to paper and bring what she saw to life in her own realistic but somehow lurid, sweaty style.

She exhaled quietly, wishing her heart rate down, excitement quivering her arms. She was done, and this drawing was special. The way she saw him was captured.

“Okay,” she said, her effort to whisper while so overridden with a strange lust, squeezing her throat and making her utterance inaudible.

“Did you say okay?”

She nodded, feeling her cheeks blush.

“I can move?”

She nodded again.

Cole exhaled now, brought his arm from the headboard, and stretched his back, favoring his stiff shoulder. “Can I see?”

“Yeah,” she said, throwing her white pastel into a tin and closing the lid. She chewed her bottom lip in strange anticipation. Moved her drawing tools aside and got to her knees, the sketchpad clutched to her chest.

“Show me,” he said with odd seriousness, looking in her eyes.

“I will,” she said, walking to him on the mattress, seeing him open an arm up inviting her to lay with him. He was naked and sexy, his arousal throbbing and prominent. She lay with him. Put herself against his side, let him fold his arm around her shoulder and cradle her.

Slowly, she revealed her drawing to him, letting the pad curl away from her. Her eyes on his, knowing already what was there and wanting only to see his reaction. His head shook, chin darted to his chest, he was taken aback. She knew. It was a good one.

“Oh my God,” he whispered, just as inaudible as she had been. He moved a hand to cover his mouth.

She smirked, then bit her smile, swallowed it up in nervousness. Cole’s eyes grew wet, and they glistened in the storm’s light.

“Holy shit, Maggie. You are so incredible.”

The drawing was disgusting, lurid. Something that would have to be hidden, never shown to another person. She showed Cole how she saw him. Dominant sex personified. Jay had been made oily and atavistic. Cole was just as sleazy, just as lubricious, but she’d captured something else there; the love of friendship, his kindness, his knowledge of her, his ability to dominate her and not frighten her, his enormous capacity as a true friend. Her own eyes began to tear. She pulled the drawing close again.

“Wow, Maggie,” he said, and he held her, clutched her to his chest and lay his chin on her head and she closed her eyes and felt his warm loving body. “There’s nothing you can’t do, is there?” he whispered.

She sat up as he lay the pad on his thighs. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t wait to see all the things you accomplish.”

She huffed, smirked, let her eyes lower to his lips. They were so close together she could feel his breath on the sensitive skin of her neck. A few nights ago they’d been intimate. With Max, together they had a threesome, too, a few nights before. Abstinence was an artificial construct. They came together slowly, Cole’s eyes lowering as well now.

At the last possible moment, even past the point where she thought she would succumb, her tummy crunched quick and fast, thrusting her expected kiss downward. Her pouted lips mashed into the rigid head of his cock and she made a cartoon kiss sound as she tried to scramble away. Flopped belly first on the mattress legs kicking to get herself away from him, she burst out laughing as his hands struggled to hold her ankles.

“Get back here,” he laughed.

He slapped at her ankles as she pretended to kick at him, crawling like an alligator on her elbows and knees back to her end of the bed. Cole remained in his half, sitting upright and forward now, muscular arms planted in the bed, gaze lowed in mirthful menace. She flipped over onto her back and raised a foot like she would strike him with a heel.

He said, “You’re such a brat.”

“You love it when I’m playful.” They stared each other down, her leg poised like a scorpion’s tail and him ready to scramble over top of her and subdue her.

“I really do.”

Her hand covered her mouth, and she said, “Ow, I hurt my lips.”

“Serves you right.”

“My teeth are throbbing.”

“How you going to explain this to your dentist?”

“My boyfriend’s cock was a lot harder than I expected.”

“You ought to know it by now.”

“I should,” she said. Then, “Stay down there,” and she indicated to the footboard with her pointed toes.

“I should probably put this beautiful dick away ... you can’t keep your mouth off it ...”

“That’s up to you,” she laughed.

Cole pivoted and got off the bed, slipped his shorts on, handled his arousal through the cotton, let her watch him, groaned. She put her foot down and enjoyed watching him dress. When he had his sweatshirt on he threw himself at the opposite end, making the bed bounce, crossing one leg over the other. She pet his foot.

He watched her silently for a while and she crossed her hands in her lap and began to feel awkward. “What?” she laughed finally and ran her hair back on both sides, tucking it behind her ears.

“You’re perfect,” he said. In his hand, pulled from his sweatshirt pouch was his iPhone, he flipped it so he could read it and she waited. He snapped a picture of her.

“Hey, don’t,” she said, putting her hands up to block her face from him. “Why did you do that?”

He was looking at his phone now, said, “I can’t draw, but I want to remember how you look right now.”

She let her hands droop, watched as he regarded the picture, his thumb still moving. “What are you doing now?”

“Sending it to Max,” he said.

“Cole ...? What the hell?” she said, scrambling over to his side. “You did not... Let me see.”

He hid his phone from her and put an arm up to block her. She punched his shoulder and slapped his chest playfully. “You better not have.”

He smiled. “Oh, I did.”

“Cole, I’m serious.”

“Uh-oh.”

She scrunched her face up and scrutinized him, narrowing her eyes to slits. There was no way he did.

Now he showed her the phone, and she peeked closer. “Oh, my God. You really sent it.”

“I told you ...”

On the screen she saw a miniaturized version of the picture he’d taken. Her sitting against the pillows in a sweatshirt and short sweatpants, her calves and feet bare. She held her hair back from her face and looked confused. Underneath Cole had written:

Cole: just helping this smart girl study for her LSAT

That wasn’t that bad. But it punched her with guilt. It didn’t belay the dirty intimate act they’d just partaken. Drawing him had been astoundingly intimate and while it didn’t show in the picture, she read it in the eyes of the girl in the photo, and maybe Max could too.

“Give me,” she said and held a hand out for his phone. He handed it over.

She typed:

Cole: It’s me, baby. I was posing for you

She sent it, grimaced at how contrite her message was, but it made her feel marginally better. She tossed his phone to the bed and lay back on her pillow. “Why would you send that?”

Cole shrugged his shoulders and watched his hands laying on his stomach. “I’m feeling Max out.”

“For what?”

Now he looked at her. “You know.”

She said, “Don’t. It’s me. I’m saying I want to cool it while he’s gone.”

“We do it all the time. What does it mean if we do it now?”

“What does it mean if I say I won’t and then I do? Don’t I have any resolve? ... Any respect for my relationship with Max? ...”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

“We’re open.”

“I know.”

“How can you have an open relationship with someone you’re going to marry?”

“It’s with you.”

“I’m special?”

“Yeah, you are,” she said, cocking her head and smiling.

He took her ankle and his thumb ran along the arch of her foot, running an excited line up the back of her neck. “So, let’s just do it.”

“No, Cole. I said I wouldn’t. I feel funny. He’s with his mom and dad.”

* * *

There was a Starbucks at the end of the hall on the floor that they were on, but when they arrived, the lineup was too long.

Ken said, “Follow me, I know where we can get a coffee.” They turned around and headed back the way they came. Ahead of them was Brian, who’d been following along about thirty paces behind while Ken and Max walked awkwardly, not speaking. Brian stood with his hands in his pockets as they got closer, Ken shrugged and nodded to him and Brian waited for them to pass. Ken and Max resumed, heading to the other end of the concourse and Brian followed at a safe distance behind.

“It’s just down here,” Ken said as they walked down the moving steps of an escalator heading to the floor below.

Two floors down they ended up at the subway level, still in the convention center. Ken led him into what looked like a diner or some sort of variety store. It had the trimmings of a gas station 7-11. Ductwork ran ahead above through steel girders, and the flat floors were chipped beige tile. Still not talking, they passed between rows of Doritos and potato chips neatly stacked in wire racks, made their way to a line of two people in the middle of the left-hand side of the store at a narrow counter. A menu board spelled out in black plastic letters all their deli items.

Max grabbed a Clif Bar while they waited. They ordered three coffees and Max paid. Heading back out he handed the third coffee to Brian who lingered in the doorway to the convention center. Ken waved for Max to follow him again and they wove through passing people and settled under the triangular slope of an overhead escalator. It was quiet here, and they were alone, the people passed by a few arm’s length away in the concourse. Brian sat and drank his coffee on a bench outside the diner.

Ken sipped his coffee, said, “So you are really out here in San Diego for school?”

Max said, “Yeah, I had to come out here for a school thing,” wanting to move quickly into the conversation he came for but feeling anxious now. Ken was less receptive than he had feared.

Ken sipped again, said, “How’s Maggie?”

“She’s doing great,” Max said. He played with the plastic tab on the lid of his coffee. “You want to sit down?”

There were no chairs, so they both sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor, Max underneath the drooping fronds of a potted palm. Max said, “You know she wants to get into law school now?”

Ken said, “Yeah, I know.”

“She talked to you?”

“No, Martin told me.”

Max nodded, took a swig of decent coffee. “Yeah, I was surprised, too.”

“I wasn’t so surprised,” Ken said.

“You weren’t?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I was surprised,” Max said. “How’s school?”

“Me? It’s great, Max. I’m studying what I’ve always wanted.” He held his coffee away and made an elaborate gesture to check the clock face on his iPhone. Max watched him, flipping his own phone over and over in his free hand. Ken said, “You know, Max. I really do have to get going. You want to meet tomorrow?”

Max said, “No, I don’t want to take up your time. It’s just ... Okay ...” He set his coffee down on the floor, preparing a strategy in his head. His phone buzzed in his grip. It was a perfect distraction, and he turned it to face him. On the screen he saw a picture of Maggie. She was sitting on her bed which he knew very well—it was where he left her this morning. The light was stormy and gray, somewhere over her shoulder on the right-hand side. She was beautiful, holding her hair back from her face, a tense look of disquiet frozen on her beautiful features. She wore a baggy sweatshirt, shorts, her legs were bare. The text was from Cole. His stomach bounced as if he had been struck. Below the picture, it read:

Cole: just helping this smart girl study for her LSAT

He sighed and inhaled while Ken watched him furtively.

“Something up?” he said.

Under Cole’s text there was another message. Though it said it was from Cole, he was sure it was from Maggie; it read: It’s me, baby. I was posing for you. Maggie taking the phone away from Cole to soothe her fiancé’s feelings. His posture slumped.

To Ken he said, “Just the reason I came all this way.”