Chapter 55 – Late Night Wine

“What shall we drink to?”

Chloe thought for a moment. “To a successful penetration?”

Morgan snorted, half amused, half guilty. “Fine. To a successful penetration.” They clinked glasses, and Chloe took a big sip.

Chloe’s gaze wandered through Morgan’s living room, which now, in the warm light of the desk lamp and the small floor lamp in the corner, seemed less chaotic than the first time she was here. More cozy. It was obviously the mess of someone who thought too much and tidied up too little.

Her gaze lingered on the shelf next to the window and fell on the trophy she had noticed last time.

Valley City Bouldering Open, 2nd Place.

“Bouldering?” she asked, nodding toward the shelf. “Your hobby?”

Morgan followed her gaze and smiled. “Bouldering is what I do in the city, yes. It’s basically the methadone version of my actual addiction.” She took a sip of wine. “What I really do when I can is free climbing. No rope, no safety equipment, just me and the rock. I go out regularly for it. Red Rocks, Bishop, sometimes Joshua Tree.”

“No rope? Oh my God.”

“No rope.” Morgan raised her free hand and spread her strong fingers. Her palms were rough, with small calluses on her fingertips and at the base of her fingers. “Hence the unfeminine, beautiful working men’s hands. Totally sexy, I know.” She turned her hand back and forth and looked at it with feigned disappointment. “The last thing a woman wants to hear is that her hands feel like sandpaper. But hey, those are the sacrifices you make for your hobby.”

Chloe smiled. “What made you choose this as a hobby?”

Morgan leaned back and pulled her legs under her. Her gaze drifted into space for a moment, as if she were seriously considering the question for the first time.

“I always need something that requires 100% concentration. When climbing without a rope, there’s never a moment when you can think about anything else or be distracted. Not about your work, not about your life, who just left you, or all the other crap you carry around with you in everyday life.” She tapped her temple. “Up there, there’s just the next hold. The next step. And if you’re not focused for even a second…” She made a downward gesture with her hand. “Then that’s it.”

“Sounds scary.”

“Absolutely. And that’s exactly the point.” Morgan smiled, and it was a genuine smile, not her usual crooked grin. “It’s both the scariest and most liberating thing I know. And it taught me that I can rely on myself. That I can do things on my own, even when it feels like I’m about to fall.”

Chloe twirled her wine glass between her fingers. She thought about her yoga mat, which lay on the floor of her apartment every morning at six. About the ritual that held her together, about the breathing exercises that cleared her head before the day tore her apart.

“I have my yoga,” she said. “It helps me stay grounded. But it definitely doesn’t have the same thrill.”

Morgan grinned. “You probably have enough thrills in your life even without free climbing.”

Chloe snorted. “You’ve got a point there.”

Morgan glanced at the clock on the wall. Quarter past midnight.

“Listen,” she said. “It’s late, we’re both a bit tipsy, and I don’t like the idea of putting you in a taxi and sending you back to your apartment right now. Do you want to sleep here?”

Chloe hesitated. Last time, she had refused. She had wanted to go home, to her own four walls, to process everything alone.

But today wasn’t like last time. Today she’d had a long day, she was a little dizzy from the wine, and the idea of lying alone in her small, dark, run-down apartment, staring at the ceiling while the ghost of Ben’s cum haunted her tongue, wasn’t particularly appealing.

“Okay,” she said. “Yes. I’d like that.”

Morgan nodded as if she had expected it and disappeared into her bedroom. A moment later, she returned with a pillow, a light blanket, and a large, soft T-shirt, which she pressed into Chloe’s hand.

Chloe held it up. It was dark gray with a faded print that looked like the logo of some climbing gym.

“This is the most comfortable sleep shirt I own,” Morgan said solemnly. “I don’t usually let anyone else wear it. Consider yourself lucky.”

“I’m touched.” Chloe hugged the shirt to her chest. It was clean and soft and smelled of laundry detergent.

Morgan spread the blanket on the sofa, fluffed the pillow, and then took a step back to admire her work. Then she paused. A mischievous smile spread across her face.

“I should apologize for making you sleep on the sofa. Normally, I’d be the last person to let an attractive young woman sleep on the sofa instead of sharing my bed with her. But I’m desperately trying to be respectful here.” She sighed dramatically. “And before you ask, I would of course sleep on the sofa myself and offer you my bed, but unfortunately I’m an old woman and need the soft mattress.”

Chloe laughed, and it was the first thing that day that felt light and genuine. “What? You can’t be that old.”

Morgan put her hand on her heart. “Twenty-eight. Practically ancient.”

She winked at Chloe before becoming serious again.

“Seriously, the sofa is more comfortable than it looks.” Morgan patted the pillow again. “I promise.”

“It’s definitely more comfortable than my bed,” said Chloe. “My bed squeaks when I breathe.”

Morgan turned off the desk lamp so that only the small floor lamp in the corner cast a warm, subdued light. Shadows fell across the bulletin board, over Samantha’s photo, over the stacks of paper and the empty wine glasses on the coffee table.

“Good night, Chloe. If you need anything, just call me. I’m a light sleeper.”

“Thanks, Morgan. Really.”

Morgan held her gaze for a moment. Then she nodded with a smile, disappeared into her bedroom, and quietly closed the door behind her.

Chloe stood alone in the dimly lit living room. She took off her clothes, slipped into the T-shirt that reached almost to her knees, and crawled under the blanket.

The sofa was actually comfortable. And yet sleep did not come.

Chloe lay on her back and stared at the ceiling, where the light from the street lamps cast a pale stripe through the gap in the curtains. Not a sound came from Morgan’s bedroom.

Her mouth tasted of red wine. Underneath, more stubbornly, it tasted of something else, and although she knew it was her imagination, that the taste had long since been replaced by Coke and pad Thai and a glass of Merlot, it was still there, like a stain that couldn’t be scrubbed away.

Ben flavor.

She waited for the shame to come. She knew the mechanism by now, having experienced it often enough. After the first shoots, it had been there every time, as punctual as a bill fluttering into the house, the subsequent wave of disgust, self-doubt, and the dull feeling of having done something irrevocable.

But the wave didn’t come.

She checked her feelings, cautiously, like someone who feels themselves after a fall to determine what is broken and what just hurts.

Was there shame? Nope, not really. And that even made sense. She had blown countless men in the last few weeks. Well, maybe not actually countless, but a lot. Strangers whose last names she didn’t know, whose faces she had forgotten by the next day, if she was honest. Men she didn’t find attractive, who smelled bad. Good God, she had given Randy Miles a blow job. Twice. What was one more? What was Ben? Another cock in a long line of cock. That was all.

It really was just a blowjob.

But what she did feel, and it burned deeper and more persistently than shame could have, was anger. At him.

At his grin when she knelt down. At the tone in his voice when he said he knew she would “thaw” eventually. At the way he had placed his hand on her knee afterward, casually, possessively, as if a door had opened that he could now walk through whenever he wanted.

“I always knew you’d come around.”

He thought she wanted it. He thought the little ice princess had finally realized what a great guy he was. He thought she was another trophy in his collection, another “special relationship,” another girl kneeling in front of his office sofa because she couldn’t help but be attracted to his irresistible mediocrity.

Chloe clenched her hands into fists under the blanket and relaxed them again.

Calm down.

There was no point in getting upset. What was done was done. What mattered was what came next. And what came next was clear: Ben would want more.

He would extend the touching. The hand on her knee would become a hand on her thigh. The looks would become longer, the hints less subtle. At some point, he would want to manoeuvre her back onto the sofa, and probably not just for a blowjob.

An unpleasant knot formed in her stomach, hard and cold, like a swallowed stone.

I’ll have to manage this. Somehow.

Play along enough to keep him useful. Keep enough distance so it didn’t escalate. Keep a balance between available and unattainable, between bait and boundary. Like walking along the edge of a cliff that dropped steeply on both sides.

The kind Morgan would probably climb over without even a rope and think it was awesome.

The thought almost made her smile.

But there was something else. Something beneath the anger, deeper, darker, and she couldn’t put her finger on it right away.

She had manipulated him.

He had sat on his sofa and thought he was the king. He had thought that she had finally given in, that his patience had paid off, that the world really worked the way he had always imagined it would. He was the shit, she was the grateful one, and now she was kneeling in front of him, slobbering his cock because that was the natural order of things.

But the truth was that she had been in control every moment. The moment he moaned, the moment he cursed in frustration, the moment he came. She had decided when he was allowed to get close and when he had to wait. And when to come.

There was a cold pleasure in it. Something hard, sharp-edged, that didn’t necessarily feel good but was extremely satisfying.

Does that make me a bad person?

Maybe. Or maybe it just meant she was adapting. That she was becoming someone who could survive in this world, with the tools this world had given her.

Chloe turned on her side and closed her eyes. The last thought before exhaustion overtook her was not a thought of Ben or Valeria or forty-six deleted files.

It was the memory of Morgan’s smile when she had given her the T-shirt. The feigned solemn voice. “This is the most comfortable sleep shirt I own.”

And it really was comfortable.