You Already Know: Twelve Erotic Stories. Charlotte Stein

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      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      You Already Know

      Four For The Seesaw

      I Have You

      Don’t I

      Heavenly Shades

      I Am

       New Dress

       Dancing On The Edge

       Heat

       Thief

       Oppositeland

       Falling

       More from Mischief

       Acknowledgements

       About the Publisher

       You Already Know

       Charlotte Stein

      I tell him not to, I tell him, ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He’s as big as a bull, as big as a brick wall, and he just bulldozes right into the store and takes Mickey D around the neck as though he’s nothing, and throws him over the counter.

      Of course, everyone knows Mickey D is no good. He shirks his responsibilities, as Mr Kirkpatrick would say – but that doesn’t mean he has to be thrown over the counter. It doesn’t make it right and fair that this bull has him crying and bleeding on the floor of Mr Kirkpatrick’s store, for something he owes or something he has or has not done.

      Even I know that. I’m pathetic, and I’m weak, and I don’t know anything about drugs or whatever this guy is into, but I understand that much.

      ‘Stop,’ I tell the bull, and he turns and looks at me with his mad, blazing eyes.

      Only they’re not mad and blazing at all. He looks wounded, I think, like someone stuck him in his side. The matador waved his cape and he charged, and now there’s a lance through his body. Soon he’s going to bleed out on the floor of this little grocery store, and no one will care because he’s the guy who threw Mickey D over the counter.

      He’s the guy who works for some drug lord or thief or pimp, and nobody cares about guys like that.

      Least of all me. I just stare at him and stare at him, until he steps back from the counter. Mickey D is crying somewhere behind it, snottily, but the bull pays no attention. He just looks at me until I notice other weird little details about him.

      His eyes are the colour of melted chocolate. He has a tattoo on his arm – a big Star of David. The grain on his shaved head is the colour of a million little iron filings, so rich and real I can almost imagine them sifting through my fingers.

      Even though there’s nothing to sift.

      And then he backs off, and walks right out the door.

      * * *

      Next time I see him, he’s not beating the shit out of anybody. But the stench of a million battles hangs all over him, like a soldier returning from a war he didn’t want to fight. He’s leaning against the truck he drives around in, shoulders too tense for someone who’s meant to be looking casual, cigarette dangling from one hand, unsmoked.

      He flicks it away when he sees me coming down to open up. It’s 6 a.m.; the light is the same colour as that grain on his head. On his face now, too, because he hasn’t shaved and there are deep shadows around his too-curved jaw.

      There’s something in his face, I think. A roundedness all over that cuts against the sharp masculinity he wears everywhere else. It’s in his eyes, too – those eyes that aren’t like chocolate at all. They’re deep and fathomless and when he calls out, ‘Hold on there a second,’ they tell me a thousand things he doesn’t want to say.

      I’m just not sure what all of them are.

      ‘Hold on there,’ he says, and I think about Mickey D flying through the air. I think about him panting, full of rage or aggression or something else altogether, and I want to run. I want to tell him, ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ just like I did in the store.

      But I don’t.

      ‘Your friend,’ СКАЧАТЬ