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Summary
Gerri is spiraling tastefully. It’s fine. She’s fine. Absolutely no one is masturbating to a perfectly curated archive of mess in 4K. Nothing to see here.
Or: The stormy comedown of Gerri Kellman’s very own personal Summer for Sickos
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Bookmark Notes:
Frank lingers a moment, eyes scanning her face with quiet concern. She gives him a faint twitch of a smile, just enough to satisfy whatever emotional obligation he’s assigned himself here. He nods, assuaged enough, and turns to go.
She’s alone again in the bleak, sealed-in dark of her office, breathing shallowly into stagnant air. The walls are closing in.
The walls are closing in and the room is spinning and she closes her eyes but it doesn’t help, of course it doesn’t help, the spinning’s inside her, imagined but frantic, and she can’t get steady, can’t find the horizon, can’t claw her way back to solid ground. She’s toppled, unseated, knocked off her axis by the sudden closing of a neat distance.
This isn’t how this was supposed to go. There had been a vision for this, their star-crossed reunion: let him see her, let him ache, and then let him fuck back off to California and his little Potemkin village media firm with the scab torn off, stinging raw like the wound never closed. And let her have a jailbreak, a release, something to pry loose the white-knuckled grip on the edges of her sanity, finally free her from the churning spiral of dread and doubt. It wasn’t supposed to end with him brushing past her at the fucking coffee machine the next morning. It only works if he stays gone.
She drags her thumbnail across the same rough edge of skin until it breaks.
Before she can stop herself, her phone is in her left hand, harsh cool light invading the stillness, the thread she should have deleted months ago already open, twelve scrolls deep. Her right hand moves without thought, slipping past the waistband of her slacks.
She’s dry, unready, flesh protesting at first as she forces herself forward, unable to stop. For a moment, it stings more than it soothes, but she presses on, jaw clenched, breath shallow, and soon enough her fingers are wet, sliding gracelessly over her skin. She’s aching and hungry and on the edge—maybe raging, actually, frantic and furious with herself, with him, with the way her body heels like a dog to the echo of his name.
Her eyes slam shut.
Maybe he’ll already be there when she boards, she thinks, waiting in the sun like it’s nothing, strutting around in a too-tight suit with his hands in his pockets and that stupid lopsided grin like the world’s never touched him. You here to lecture me again or just check if my dick still works? Her breath is already starting to stutter.
Or maybe he’ll catch Martyn behind her, catch his hand on the small of her back, and slump, all sullen and tense, jaw clenched and fists twitching like he’s seconds from collapse, and his eyes will turn dark as his gaze flicks between them, hungry and angry all at once as he mutters, If this off-brand Hasselhoff motherfucker stares into your eyes while you come, I swear to god I’ll walk into traffic.
Or actually, what will happen is: he’ll find her later, quietly, alone, and he’ll do something new and unexpected, something he’s never done before, like wrap his hand around her elbow or brush his lips up by her ear, and he’s steady, somehow, clear-eyed and vibrating with a grown up confidence, with something fresh and sharp in the set of his jaw as he lines his whole body up next to her body. Did you hear I’m back in? I’ve got big plans, he’ll tell her, polished, smooth. Rockstar and the Mole Woman ride again.
Her whole body pulls tight as she comes—sudden, hard, relentless, a wave of heat and shame and humiliating relief curling her toes and arching her spine. She rides out the end of it with her forehead against the desk, her hand still clenched around the now-black screen of her phone.