Paper Dolls [Book Two] Read online

  I wanted to hide but I didn’t. I wasn’t shy with her but right now I was telling her things that I’d been using as masturbation material for years.

  “You’re a lot more complicated than I am,” she stared openly, a look of awe making her seem dreamy and almost not real.

  “What do you mean? I thought I was pretty simple.” I’d never considered myself a difficult person.

  “You think that but you’re wrong,” she said. “Even our fantasies, see? Mine are simple, someone comes to me and they see me. They touch me, we have sex. It’s painfully simple. Cinematic even. No struggle. No mystery. No confusion or fear. But then with you, there are layers, unanswered questions, so much detail that makes sense to you but loses meaning with me because I can’t understand because I haven’t felt it, haven’t been there. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve had passionate sex with some basic celebrity in my dreams. Those are the kinds of fantasies I have. They’re not complicated.”

  “Really?” I swallowed. She was right. I guess my main fantasy was a bit more complicated than just sex.

  “Yup,” she said. She seemed to be thinking an awful lot.

  “Is that good or bad? I guess neither. We’re all different. The only sex dreams I usually have are with someone that’s faceless and I just get the feelings of what’s going on but I always wake up touching myself.”

  “But then why have sex with someone then? Why not just touch yourself? I don't see…”

  “What do you mean? The person isn’t a specific one is all. It’s always been like I was waiting to put someone in that role.” I felt like she wasn't really getting it but explaining it was hard.

  “Where are you in these dreams. How do they take you? What do you feel?”

  “They’re looking down at me, and I up at them, and we’re connecting on all these different levels but I can feel them inside me and my breathing and theirs. How much they want me and only me. It’s not just fucking for fucking’s sake. It’s making love.”

  “This is going to sound bad but that scares me Avery… I think I’d feel a lot better if I knew you were having dreams about someone specific. How can I fill the shoes of someone who never existed? Someone who doesn’t exist?”

  I finally got it. I inhaled sharply and sat up. “That’s the thing! Ever since the Inn the few times I’ve had sex dreams, which have become more frequent, by the way, they were all about you. I haven’t had a single one where it wasn’t you. I guess I should have told you before. I just thought we were talking about before only. You do all those things that composed my dreams and more. It’s live and real and I can hold you and when I was waking up from them you were there and I could touch you. I think I was dreaming about you before I knew what you looked like. That sounds silly though.”

  “Just sounds too good to be true,” she let out a small close-mouth laugh. “I just want to fulfill you. I want to know you’ve found exactly what you need. All that time you were with Ben you thought you were doing something you liked. And he could take you, he could control you. I don’t think I can let myself do that. I could get a riding crop. I have one. But I couldn’t hurt you Avery, not bad and not repeatedly. I’d cry if I did.”

  “I wish you would stop worrying about that. Do you not believe me? Ben was not even comparable and I didn’t say I wanted you to hit me with a riding crop.” I was getting a little hot. No matter what I said she seemed to have a condition or an underlying fear to counter it. Sometimes I just wanted her to believe that she was everything I needed. “I love you. I do not love people like this. It’s too dangerous but you made me feel like I could with you. I knew I could trust you. I just… I don't feel like you really believe that I DO love you like I say I do sometimes.”

  “Baby, no, no, that’s not it,” she said. “I know you love me. That’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about sex. We’ve both shared these secrets about ourselves, how we’ve let others take us over and have their way. You asked me what I wanted to know. This is just one thing. This is just one of the things bothering me and already it’s hard to talk about, hard to understand… Because it’s not simple. I’m not saying I don’t believe you about loving me I’m asking if I’m enough for you when it comes to sex. We’ve had a lot of sex we just haven’t really talked about it. Given everything… I think it’s important that we do. I’m sorry if that’s confusing or strange. I just don’t want you thinking you have to fake things with me. And I want you to know, the way you touch me? The way you watch? The way you make me feel? All of that is way better than any of my fantasies, even the long ones that go on for hours and cause me to wake up all shaky and sweaty.”

  My posture relaxed. She had explained it now and I could understand where she was coming from. My eyes softened and I leaned over to kiss her. Just a quick kiss of reassurance.

  “Oh Vi. I wish I could really just let you feel how I feel when you touch me. It’s insane. You really only have to come in the room and I’m already wet for you. And then you put your hand out and touch me and it just gets worse. I don’t think I’ve told you because it’s a little embarrassing and I didn’t want you to think that all I wanted from you was sex. That’s not it. Because I love who you are and that’s what makes me so unbelievably into you.” I pursed my lips and smiled at her with dreamy eyes.

  I pulled her hand toward me and sighed. “I could show you right now. Ever since you came back with that wine I’ve been totally hot for you. And when we have sex I think you make me go to another planet mentally. I’ve never had any feelings close to that. It’s so fast and so intense. It used to take a long time for me to cum with anyone, even myself.”

  “Really?” She asked. “You’re right,” she sighed. “I do have a hard time believing you. You’re just always saying the right things. It makes me naturally skeptical.”

  “I could say the same about you, Vi. You scare me sometimes with how much you’re like the perfect person I always thought up in my head.”

  “I never lie to you Avery. And you know I hate being called perfect.”

  “And I never lie to you. I’ve avoided things with you but I’ve never lied to you. I know you hate it but it’s not perfect in a general sense but perfect FOR me.”

  “Did you think I’d been lying to you about things?” Fear soaked my eyes and I sat there trying to keep my lip from trembling.

  “I didn’t think that you lied, no… But I thought you could be keeping things out. Being extra sweet. Agreeing with me when I’m overly open. None of those would be particularly bad but they’d be realistic. That worried me. Of course. Just like I’m worried you don’t really know me yet. I feel like maybe you’ll wake up to me someday and see me for who I really am and then you’ll be ready to leave, ready to go. Sometimes people fall in love with other people just because that other person loved them first. I don’t want this to be a case of stockholm syndrome for you.”

  “What?” I scoffed. “I’m not Patty Hearst and you’re not holding a gun to my head. Believe me, if I hadn’t fallen hard for you I would’ve been gone a long time ago and I’d sure as hell never agree to marry you. All of that scares me to the core. That’s why I never let people see me. People leave me. They just do. Because they don’t like what they see or I’m not good enough to hold their attention but if I act nonchalant they at least want to stick around to figure me out. I don’t do that with you. I never could because you slay me. I can’t pretend with you.”

  If she didn’t get it then I would fall apart. I wouldn’t want to even think. I’d go numb. I’d have no one and nowhere to go.

  “I’m scared just like you are, Olivia. I wouldn’t blame you for dumping me tomorrow because I’m not smart enough or interesting or even pretty enough. That’s how I feel every day but I don’t want you to know that I’m scared all the time because I know you thought I was just going to up and leave you when we first started. It was a real risk but I can’t now. You’re…. All I have. And if you don’t trust that I’m
going to love you like I say I am then I don’t know… Maybe I don’t have anything.”

  I couldn’t keep the tears back. My nose stopped up as soon as they came and I was a wet blubbery mess by the time I finished talking. I was serious. I hoped she saw that.

  “And I don’t cry and you have gotten me to cry for both good and bad reasons way too much over the last two weeks. I fucking hate crying but I can’t help it with you. Because you’re in here.” I beat my fist on my chest over my heart so hard that I could feel the bone and hear the thump of my knuckles against it.

  “Hey,” she said. “Shhhhh.” I felt her hand grab my wrist as she crawled up into me a little more and whispered in my ear. “You’re smart,” she said, kissing me soft. “You’re interesting,” she said, nudging me with her nose and kissing me softly again. “You’re so beautiful Avery. So so beautiful.” I felt her take my earlobe into her mouth and suck on it. “And you have me, okay? I’m stupid and I make you cry but you have me.” Her lips dropped my earlobe and I felt her hand on my face pulling me to kiss her. Her mouth filled me up and I could feel her breathing my air as she touched me.

  “I’m an idiot,” she breathed painfully, mid-kiss. Her eyes closed as she pressed her forehead onto mine and breathed me in.

  I kissed her back desperate to feel her inside my mouth. I wanted her right now. My face was all wet and I could taste the tears but they kept coming. “You’re not an idiot.” I sniffed and hiccuped. “You’re my beautiful imperfect Olivia.”

  I shifted, pulling our bodies in line, pulling her hand away from my face and looking at it, playing with her fingers for a second before I looked into her eyes, blinking through tears.

  “Please?” I rasped.

  I pulled her hand down to the waist of my pants. “Please…”

  I unbuttoned my pants with one hand and grabbed hers again, slowly putting it inside to touch me. I kept her gaze and felt her there. Even when we fought or had these all-out discussions I was ready for her.

  “Touch me.”

  I pushed her hand past my underwear and into my sex, adjusting so she could feel it all.

  “See, even when I’m falling apart I need you like this.”

  I waited to see what she would do, her eyes were so full of something that I felt she would burst out with it.

  As soon as I slipped her inside I heard her gasp but her eyes stayed with me. “You feel so good,” she whispered, nearly stopped in the moment, almost hurt by me, hurt by reality and always a little too worried.

  I felt her hand slow it’s movements and I put a hand on her cheek. “If you stop now, I’m going to kill you.” I tried to catch my breath. It was hard since I couldn’t breathe through my nose.

  She sank two fingers into me again and my eyes rolled upward. I pushed at my pants, trying to get them down so she could have a better angle. She stopped for a second and helped me, climbing on top and leaning up into me, her fingers going deeper and harder than before.

  I moved my body in frantic motions, trying to get more, trying to make her look at me so I could see what happened to her when she fucked me.

  My words were true. Thirty seconds and I was almost there, brimming on the edge, dying for more of her. Needing her to do this to me forever. I didn’t want it to be over but I did because it felt so euphoric. It was too much.

  Two more hard thrusts and she curled her fingers in me, sending me crashing into a sea of feelings I couldn’t swim through fast enough. I was drowning in what she did to me.

  I was making sounds I couldn’t control. Olivia’s other hand came up to my mouth and covered it but she never stopped fucking me, not until I came hard, and all the way, turning out until I could breathe again.

  It wasn’t until I’d completely come out the other side that I remembered we were at her house, in her bed. That her parents were somewhere close. That maybe I shouldn’t have been screaming like this where I was. I couldn’t help it. She made me forget the world ever existed. I wanted her.

  Chapter Eight

  Olivia

  More and more I was finding out that I wasn't necessarily good at this whole honesty thing. Honesty from me led to insecurity and confusion, in Avery, and after my words I could fully see why but I could never go back and change what I’d said or the conversations that we had or the way I made her feel. Often times, Avery made me feel like she was ready to talk about important things but then we’d talk and I'd know that I should never have brought anything up in the first place.

  She had too much going on emotionally to have to deal with my weird brand of ponderings and questions. In a lot of ways she was a lot more sensitive than I knew how to deal with.

  For some reason I thought a talk about fantasies would be a semi-safe bet. It was the first question I could think of when Avery asked me what I wanted to know.

  Idiot that I am, I fell right into a trap.

  What do you dream of Avery?

  What do you really like Avery?

  Avery, when I did this to you did it really rock your world or were you just pretending so I’d like you more?

  God, I am such an ass.

  I got lucky again. Dangerous territory turned into the perfect fodder for sex.

  I think that was the one great thing about us, the one thing we would always have. We’d always want sex from one another. I guess I couldn’t fuck that up. I should feel lucky right?

  Right now I was just finding it hard to think that Avery’s wanting of sex even had anything to do with me at all. I thought of her fantasy and of the way she seemed when we first pulled up to her house and it was time for her to go away from me.

  As I thought of Avery, the intense remembrance of a Eugene O’Neill quote from A Long Day’s Journey Into Night pounded hard in my brain.

  “The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself.”

  I thought of her other fantasy… Being lost alone out at sea. When I saw her sometimes I saw her walking alone into the lion’s den, walking alone into fire, a stoic vision among smoke. It’s hard to explain. It has something to do with that very first day of knowing her. The way she looked when she was all alone in that parking lot. The way she looked when I found her nearly unconscious at that lake. The feeling of that Eugene O’Neill quote continued to unsettle me.

  “Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.”

  I thought about Adam… He was a ghost to her now, somehow still alive but gone.

  What could it mean to want to be part of everything but feel at the same time to want not to be here, want not to be seen?

  It was clear, Avery lived in that fog. Even in dreams she embraced it and it was a part of her, an actual entity she communicated with, a thing she did crave.

  Though, I still wasn’t sure exactly what her recurring fantasies meant, I did know that she always did want me to touch her, especially after I’d accidentally messed with her head.

  Maybe she was right? Maybe I am meant to be faceless like in her dream. A no one. A complete stranger. Maybe that’s all she really needs...

  I hate that image. That’s how I’ve felt my whole life: blurred and manipulated, used and obscured. I hate thinking that it doesn’t matter if it’s me or someone else fucking her. I didn’t think something like this could ever upset me this much.

  What’s worse? I can’t explain it to her. I don’t know if I ever will.

 
According to Avery's fantasy none of me matters when it comes to sex as long as I’m touching her right.

  And I know I shouldn’t project...

  I know I asked her for her fantasies PRE-US. But my fantasies were all stupid. They always were.

  If I had a dime for every time I was in my music room with Dianna Agron passing listlessly through the frame of the door only to cozy on up next to me on the piano bench I’d be slightly embarrassed at that neat silver pile of shiny dimes by my side.

  I always dreamed I’d have a specific person, not a feeling, not a place.

  It’s so real to me I can see myself on the floor counting those dimes now like a calm little kid.

  That’s all I’m saying and all I’m thinking. In a lot of ways I just feel simple and strange.

  Meanwhile, Avery’s somewhere else altogether in a place I simply cannot be.

  Her fantasies are like Eyes Wide Shut or a David Lynch film that may never be fully decrypted. My fantasies are like every Lifetime movie, every CHER video, every cliche representation OF a cliche. And how sad is that? What the hell does that even mean?!

  AND SHE’S THE ONE WHO LIKES NICHOLAS SPARKS!!!

  She’s haunted is what it means. She needs more than just some simple girl with simple fantasies and simple thoughts. Too much has happened to her.

  My eyes squeezed tight to fight back tears. I didn’t want to be touching her right now.

  But she needed me and she deserved better things…

  I felt overwhelmed like maybe I was her mistake.