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“Mine,” he says. Not loud. Just like it’s a fact.

I’m lying under him, sweaty and sore and stretched open with a man’s cum inside me for the first time in my life, and all I can think about is my midterm Thursday. Beloved. Twelve pages of notes in my bag on that couch in the other room.

I am not about to get no studying done.

“I got class at ten,” I tell the ceiling.

He kisses my shoulder. “Misha will drive you.”

“I gotta go home first. I don’t have clothes. You ripped my shirt.”

“I’ll have clothes sent up.”

“Sasha.”

He lifts his head again and looks at me. And he’s smiling. I didn’t know a face that hard could do that.

“You’re not going home tonight, Dylan.”

I open my mouth to argue.

Nothing comes out.

Sasha

Three

Sasha

I’ve never watched a woman sleep. I never stayed long enough. Now I can’t stop.

It’s three in the morning, and I’m sitting in the chair by the bed, watching her. She’s face down in the middle of my bed, one arm hanging off the side, her lips parted, breathing slow and deep.

The sheet’s down around her thighs. I pulled it down. Her ass is right there, big and round and brown, two dimples at the bottom of her spine I want to put my tongue in. My fingerprints are on her hips. My teeth are on her tit. There’s a hickey on the inside of her thigh I don’t even remember leaving.

And on the sheet between her legs, a smear of red.

I’m keeping that sheet. Housekeeping isn’t touching it. It’s going home with me to Santa Cruz, in a drawer, forever.

I was the first. I’m the last. Any man who wants to be second can go swimming in the Pacific with cinder blocks on his feet.

Her phone’s on the nightstand. It’s buzzed twice since midnight. I pick it up. No passcode. This girl walks around LA with no lock on her phone and no lock on her life, and some motherfucker grabbed her two nights ago.

Twelve texts from Tasha 🍑, all caps. ARE YOU ALIVE. IS HE HOT. DID YOU FUCK HIM. I’M PUTTING YOU ON A MILK CARTON.

One text from Jordan (Morrison class).

hey u wanna study together before thursday? my place?

His place.

I delete it. I block Jordan. I delete Jordan. I put my number in as Sasha and text myself from her phone. One word. Mine. Then I take a picture of her, lips parted, braids everywhere, my bite on her tit, and set it as my lock screen.

I put her phone back face down, exactly where it was.

My cock’s been hard for two days. I’m done sitting in this chair.

I get on the bed between her legs. She doesn’t wake up. I take her by the hips and roll her on her back, slow, and she sighs and turns her face into the pillow and stays asleep. Her thighs fall open on their own.