Page 76 of Oleander

“Then that means you’re skilled or just big. Which is it?”

“Maybe I’m both?” I said boldly. I wasn’t sure I was either, but I clung to the boast like a limpet to rock.

Caspien studied me, a light dancing in his eyes that made me feel pinpricked all over. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.”

I felt the weight in his words like a weight on my dick.

“I suppose you will,” I got out.

He recovered quicker than I did, and then we were talking about the film they’d made them watch in the recreation room after dinner.

A week later, he asked me, “So, do you enjoy it, then? With her.”

I was lying in bed. I hadn’t gotten dressed after the shower. I’d masturbated while thinking about him again; I’d taken to doing it on the nights we were due to talk so I was calmer and less agitated and more prepared for whatever state I’d find him in when he answered the phone. That night, I was wrapped in only a towel and still loose-limbed and hot from the wet heat of the shower. My brain was sated and unguarded.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Christ,” he exclaimed. He was eating red grapes, slipping the dark rounds into his mouth, biting them with one side, before chewing quietly.

I sat up a little. “Look, I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like. I mean, it feels good when I...you know, and it feels nice when I...when it starts...”

“Jesus, your descriptive abilities are astounding; Oxford will be lucky to have such a wordsmith in their midst.” He rolled his eyes. “Please tell me you have access to more of your vocabulary when writing words down.”

“Shut up,” I said. “I don’t write about sex.”

“And evidently, you don’t talk about it either.”

“No, I just have it. A lot.”

This shut him up. He stopped chewing and stared at me.

I began to feel awkward under the scrutiny of his gaze. “I mean not a lot, a lot. Just...like a couple of times a week. Not that often, really. Alfie says Georgia comes over every night and wants to do it more than once a night. Which is—”

“Would you still break up with her if I asked you to?” he said right over me.

I stiffened. He put another grape into his mouth, bit down, and then began to chew.

“What?”

“You said once, after I made you come, that you’d break up with her if I asked you to.”

I remembered, of course. But my mind was stuck on the arrangement of those words:after I made you come. Afterhemademecome. It felt hugely significant.

He waited.

I swallowed. “Why would you even ask that?”

“It wasn’t my idea, Jude. It was yours. Remember.”

“Of course, I remember; that’s not what I’m asking.”

“What are you asking?”

I hesitated. “Is...do you? Is that what you want?”

I could not, in that moment, comprehend the idea of him saying ‘yes’. Or rather, I could, but it seemed so absurd to me that he may as well have asked me if I wanted to move to theHimalayas with him and become a Tibetan monk. What was also absurd was how certain I was that I’d do it if he asked me to.

He put another grape into his mouth. “I just want to know if you would still break up with her if I asked you to.”