DITW 10-18: Flight

He looked at Devlin, jaw clenched. “There. Does this make you fucking happy?”

Devlin frowned, squinted, leaning away like he needed glasses, looking down and trying to make out in the dim of his living room whether he’d worn them. He looked to Josh, a small smirk to one side. “Are those the panties?”

“They are,” he said with a measure of defiance, hoping in some way seeing a man humiliated but standing straight might show Devlin how ashamed he should be, making the request at all. “Does it make you happy?”

Devlin put up his hands like he didn’t know what to say, but his eyes showed a certain delight.

“I did what you wanted. I wore them. And you’ve got nothing to say?”

“I just don’t get it,” Devlin said, shaking his head like he was trying to break free from the moment. “You surprised me.”

“Surprised you how? You told me to. You said I had to. And that I had to show you.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got no leverage now. I showed you the photo already. I could see if I said show me before I show you the picture you came to see, but you saw it already. Do you just want to show me?”

“No, I don’t want to show you! You made me show you,” he said, fumbling to get his zipper up.

“Josh, you could have got out of here without doing that.”

“Then why even fucking tell me to do that at all?” He popped his button in place again. This was like standing naked by the ocean at night and each wave that hit you opened a door to a closed room in your brain and splashed around, stirring up all the times someone humiliated you. Devlin in the locker room. Devlin and his buddies and their cruel taunts.

Devlin turned away, and in the moment before he did, Josh could see he was amused, could see that look of mirth Devlin would get when he dominated other kids in the school. He took a step away before turning around again. “I guess like I wanted proof of life. You know? Wanted to know you had stakes in the game.”

“This isn’t a game, Devlin. It’s my life. We’re not in high school anymore. None of this is funny.”

“Who’s laughing?” That amusement had disappeared from his expression. Now he looked cold. “I wanted you to prove you were invested.”

“You wanted to humiliate me.”

“You choose to be humiliated. If you owned it, you wouldn’t be.”

“Fucking psychobabble,” he muttered.

“If you opened your jeans up and said look at my hard cock in these satin panties because this shit turns me on, no one could take that from you.”

“You’re humiliating me now while you’re saying I shouldn’t be humiliated. You fucking talk in circles.”

“And you’re a rigid prick. You know that?”

“I didn’t wear Kimmy’s underwear because it turns me on, so why the fuck would I own that? I don’t own it. That’s you. Why don’t you own that you’re a miserable manipulator who is interfering with my marriage?”

“This is the rigid prick part. Right here. I’m not interfering. I was minding my own business, and I didn’t manipulate a single thing. My manipulations, as you call them, are for your benefit. I’ve been nice to you—”

“Sending me pictures of my wife, telling me to come tonight wearing the panties I found? That you hid for me to find. Are you crazy?”

“Why don’t you work with me instead of against me? Ask yourself that. If I ask you to wear panties, call me out on it and say no. Say you won’t do that.”

“I grew up with you, Devlin. Stop gaslighting me. And saying no is working against you, not with you. Plus, if I say I won’t, and I don’t, you’ll make me suffer. You’ll make me suffer twice as much. That’s why I wore them.”

Devlin said nothing for a little while, like he was contemplating what he just heard. Calmer, he said, “Would Kimmy approve of you wearing them?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you should take them off. I don’t think you should have showed me. I didn’t even ask.”

“You fucking told me to wear them.”

“Don’t do it if you don’t want to. That’s what I’m saying. Stand up to me.”

“That’s never worked before.”

Devlin nodded, squeezed his nose, eyeing him. He rubbed his brow, then ran his large hand down his face. “Life is chaos, Josh. Everything is chaos. All around, up and down. That’s why you don’t see it—see what’s at stake here and how you can clean up. That’s why you resist it. You have this existential understanding of order that’s let you down, and now your boat’s got a leak and you’re hanging on to a lifesaver of an idea you thought kept you safe before. But it’s just like that boat that let you down already, put you in those big waves, where it’s cold and foreboding and you know you’ll never see shore again. But there is a shore, man. You know there is one, you just have to have faith.”

Josh shook his head, disbelieving the nonsense Devlin spouted with conviction. Kimmy had told him how he did this. “I don’t even know what you’re saying, Devlin.”

“Josh, I’m telling you, your life and everything you love depends on it: there is order here.” He gestured toward the TV and the lurid picture of Kimmy with her legs spread open like a woman who needed to get fucked. “You don’t see it, don’t see your role in it, but it’s right out in front of you, and you just got to reach out and put your hand around it. When you hold it, you’ll feel its strength, and you’ll know it’ll help you back to shore.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “What happens when I’m on shore?”

“A man who can survive what you’re going through, a man who can make it back through all that wind and waves and black, scary night, a man who can swim knowing there are monsters out there who can swallow him in one gulp, and some who’ll bite him in two, three, four, maybe a hundred pieces, well, when that man makes it to shore, feels sand under his feet, the land will be his.”

Josh raised his eyebrows, aloof, saying, “He’ll walk on it like a king.”

Devlin’s smile crumpled. “You think it’s a joke. I get it, I don’t blame you. I want you to think about it. I mean, really sit and think. You’re rejecting it because you’re a man who only sees the chaos.”

“It is chaos. Everything is chaos. You just said it.”

“Put it in order, Josh. That’s all we want. Men, I mean. We want order. We want stability.”

Josh scoffed and walked away, turning his back on Devlin and shaking his head. “What’s stable about this? Tell me what you see as stable.” His heart grew heavy knowing the thing he would say next. “You put your fucking fingers in my wife.” Inside Kimmy.

“A man who wears panties to my apartment tonight instead of bringing a machete knows exactly what’s stable about this. You’re just afraid to admit it.”

Now Josh had reached a dead end, had wandered down a box canyon and had come to its terminus with riders on his tail. He turned around to regard Devlin, out of excuses, but still afraid to say it. “Tell me.”

“You and Kimmy ran a game on me in Cayman. Both of you want this if you’re going to lay games like that. I heard you guys together. You wanted me to. I heard you fucking her. You guys knew I was waiting for you. Knew I could hear you. So, look. We can make it happen.”

“What happen?”

“Your wildest dreams, Josh.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he said, but his heart was pounding.

“Sure you don’t. That’s all right. You and I both know something was going on between you and Kimmy, and I was a third wheel. Third wheel on a tricycle, though, my friend.” He showed Josh a wry raising of an eyebrow. “Maybe even the big wheel out front.”

“I’m not even sure what you’re saying. What are you saying?”

“I like you, and I’m not saying anything you don’t want to hear. You’ve played me along the way, put me where you want me. Why are you so afraid to commit?”

“Commit to what?”

“Getting what you want.”

“Just say it.”

Devlin stared at him with steady confidence. “You want to watch me with her. You want to watch me with Kimmy. It excites you; the idea thrills you. You hide from it. You skulk around with shame, when what you want is pure and, really, unsurprising. You know that Kimmy wants it, too.”

“She doesn’t. She plays the games for me. It’s me.”

Devlin chuckled. “Kimmy wants it more than you do.”

His stomach went loose and squirrelly and he felt the strong need to have a seat. Instead, he stood upright, wobbling a little, but intact. “Did she say that?”

Devlin fixed his posture, more serious and judicial. “That’s something you should ask your wife. Ask Kimmy what she wants. She still works for me. She didn’t run too far away.”

That was true. And he was afraid to confront her over it. He was afraid she would say no again, that she wanted the money and the job.

“Ask her and she might tell you. There’s no reason to be afraid.”

Now he looked at Devlin with wild disbelief. No reason to be afraid?

Devlin said, “There isn’t, Josh. If you cross this threshold, only amazing things await you. And you know that. That’s why you’re here.”

Devlin studied him a long while as he stood numbed and muddled, lost in a cottony fog, knowing there was nothing to search for because he knew what it was and where to find it. As much as he hated Devlin’s words, why had he come here tonight? Why on earth would he have complied with such an insane request?

Because you wanted this.

Deep down, you’ve always wanted this.

Devlin could see Josh’s mind working, his expression lightening, dipping a little to meet Josh eye to eye. “What if I’m making up stories right now? What if I fingered Kimmy the other day like I told you, but it was just the way I finger her most days of the week? What if part of the reason Kimmy took this job with me was so she could get out of the house and have an affair with me?

He stepped back, wounded and shocked by the change in direction. “Fuck you.”

Devlin snuffled a laugh, seeing the humor in it, throwing up his hands and saying, “It could be true. Maybe if you sneak your hand between all the cushions in my apartment, you’ll snag a pair of your wife’s panties, her bras, used condoms... If we used condoms.”

The idea they’d been sneaking around behind his back punched him in the belly and he exhaled through his nose. The thought of Kimmy and Devlin in this very apartment, on the couch where he’d found the panties, and Kimmy naked and getting fucked hard without a condom, pinched at his core, squeezed his soul. The hurt brought a strange delight.

Devlin pointed to the TV. “See this picture? Come look at it again. Let’s look at it.” They took a step toward it, both of them looking at Kimmy’s naked pussy, wet and shiny. “What if I have a hundred photos of Kimmy like this one? What if I have thousands? What if I told you there were videos?”

His heart rate spiked into space. “There are?”

“I’m making a point, Josh. What if there were videos of me fucking Kimmy, and you could watch them and listen to her sounds, listen to her get it deep and hard? I bet you’d love to hear what she sounds like.”

His heart galloped out of control and his pulse raced so hard his hearing grew murky and distant. “No...”

“Josh, this is my point. Look within”—he touched a tented hand to Josh’s chest—“When I tell you the worst thing imaginable, you’ve already explored it in your own mind. You’re ready for it. And, when I sent you this picture, you didn’t call some ethics board like you said, didn’t call a lawyer. Fuck, you didn’t even show up here with a gang of your buddies, you came here wearing the panties I told you to wear. Isn’t it obvious to you yet what you want? Why can’t you see it?”

Devlin wasn’t wrong. He was a bully and a manipulative thug, but the things he said weren’t wrong. He’d called Meyer and told him to cover for him, and he’d come here tonight wearing Kimmy’s panties, all to see a better photo of his wife compromised by his tormentor. They should be enemies, but Devlin wasn’t lying about the secret desires that darkened Josh’s doorstep. He swallowed and licked his lips, his mouth dry.

Devlin put his strong grip on Josh’s shoulder. “Right? You see it now. Think about it.”

Josh shrugged his shoulder away, and then stepped back, the whole while disregarding Devlin’s gaze, and looking instead to the screen and the photo of the woman he loved with her legs opened for another man. He’d really put his fingers inside her. Why didn’t that enrage him more? He was angry, but angry at himself. He’d wanted all of this from the beginning, and he’d teased Kimmy to the point she’d succumbed to his game. And that surrender to his desires left her somewhere on her back, on a pallet of something, her legs wide open, her pussy wet, Devlin Stone taking photographs.

Devlin turned to look at the photo as well. “What if Kimmy likes it deep?”

Josh hissed in air at the shock of the words, like water thrown in his face.

Devlin half faced him. “I could tell you that. I could tell you she has a pocket, it’s like a coin purse, folded over behind her cervix, squished over her uterus, and when I fuck her deep, like maybe three times a week, I get in that spot.” He went nearer to the TV and touched the image of naked Kimmy, touching her pussy, stroking the finger point higher to above where her skirt hooped her waist. “Kimmy doesn’t like it when I bump her cervix, but if I tilt those skinny hips the right way, I glide right by, and the head of my cock fills that coin purse”—he circled Kimmy’s tummy with a finger—“stretches it out, and boy when I do, Kimmy comes like never before, her feet go like”—he put up his hands in trembling fists, posing like a horse trying to box—“and then, look out, because Kimmy Chang’s a squirter.”

Josh exhaled shaky breath through his pouted lips. His eyes had gone to wide circles and his heart was a rapid drumbeat.

It was true. Kimmy did do that. It sounded so real. And she wasn’t always one.

One what, Josh?

Say it... A squirter.

That was new. It was new, and it started after she began working for Devlin Stone.

Devlin crossed his arms, all matter of fact now, saying, “Women never want every inch, ninety-nine point-nine percent want only half of it. Kimmy’s that point-one percent.” He rumbled a small laugh, then dropped a hand and squeezed his enormous bulge. With it in his hand, Josh could make out the clear shape of it under the fabric, the flared rim of his cock head, even the veins. “So when she comes on my cock, its buried in her all the way, our pubic bones grinding, and her squirt patters up to my chin, sprinkling in my chest hairs, and man, the way her pussy quivers on me in that moment? . . . I’ve never had a pussy as good as Kimmy’s.”

Devlin’s malevolent eyes fell on Josh’s now, and his smile looked twisted. But there was a challenge in his expression: am I lying or is what I’m saying true?

He wanted it to be true. He wanted the unknowing to be over. The purgatory of suspicion and fantasy was killing him and he just wanted it to be true, so it would end. It would be better than another day of torturous conjecture.

He tried to swallow again, but it was difficult. He choked, cleared his throat. “Why would you say something so awful?” His voice was a coffin’s creak. “How could you think it’s okay to talk about my wife like that?”

Devlin’s expression changed to sympathetic, head leaning to one side. “Show me again.”

“What?”

“Show me again. Show me those panties.”

“No.”

“Show me, Josh. I’m trying to make a point here.”

Josh made no move to unzip his denim again and Devlin smiled with calm patience, but then taking matters into his own hands and unbuttoning Josh’s jeans. He said, “May I?”

Josh said nothing, allowed Devlin to unbutton and unzip him. “Now pull your fly open and show me. You know it, you can just admit it. Or show me and prove I’m wrong.”

He said in a robotic monotone, like another person speaking nearby, “What do you want to see?”

“Part your fly, Josh. Show me the panties.”

His hands were autonomous things, moving to obey his bully’s command. He parted the fly and showed Devlin, both of them looking at what he revealed. His cock was hard and humping out his wife’s skimpy panties. The ones Devlin had stripped from her thighs before he finger fucked her. Before he put his fingers in Kimmy and then later made Josh smell them. He closed his eyes, his mind swirling, his breathing smooth but rapid.

Devlin tugged the panties waistband and his eyes snapped open. “Show it to me.”

They looked at each other, then down, and Josh thumbed out the waistband, his much smaller cock freed, ticking from left pointing to straight up, the naked tip shimmering with pre-come.

“I told you a man’s worst nightmare and you’re hard as a rock. You should see the energy in your eyes. Don’t hate me. Don’t hate what we do. Let it go, let it happen, get what you want. Kimmy and I are waiting for you to catch up.”

He shook his head, and in frantic tugs, pushed his erection back into the panties and jerked up his zipper. He turned away, his mind racing, the fight-or-flight right now screaming fuck it, flee, flee, flee!

Behind him, Devlin said, “So you have to figure something out, Josh. You’ve got homework. You have to think, ‘Is Devlin fucking with me?’ . . . And you have to think why. Why would Devlin do anything? If anything I said tonight is true, why the fuck would I say it? You, Josh, box your dreams away, when I’m telling you, if you held your head up and looked where you were going, you might actually get there. You’re the one who is wrecking this for yourself, but you’re wrecking it for Kimmy. And for me, too.”

“I gotta get the fuck out of here,” he said, heading for the door, Devlin following him. As he shoved his feet back into his shoes, he looked up to see Devlin with his arms folded, leaning against the wall.

Josh said, “Is that shit you said true?”

Devlin shrugged a shoulder. “Look in your heart and tell me if it would matter.”

“Of course it would matter,” he said, thinking of Kimmy and Devlin fucking three times a week in this apartment. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You know you want this. You can’t even say no anymore. You’re holding up these weak placards with ‘It matters’ written on it in Sharpie, you even got the little exclamation point, but you’re just a man with a broken-down limo waiting at the airport, holding up your weak sign and hoping you’ll find someone in the crowd who cares. Nobody cares, Josh. Hold that sign up all day. Hold it as high as you can. It matters, it doesn’t matter. There’s no one to judge you, make you feel small, hurt you. Get what you want, man. Get what you want.”

His eyes darted from Devlin and all around the man’s apartment. “I have to go. I’m going.” He opened the door and stepped into the hall.

Devlin said after him, “You knew it was happening and you did nothing, Josh. You explained it away because deep down, you wanted it to be true. Now you know it is. What are you going to do, run away?”