Neighbors | PJM [18+]

Chapter One: Scrapped

"THE SEX BETWEEN THESE TWO CHARACTERS feels as forced as the sex was during my first marriage, and that was the one that was arranged."

Herb Reynolds had a creative way with words that didn't fail to translate verbally and leave listeners feeling a particular way. Cat, in that moment, felt particularly, so utterly, embarrassed, and at that comment, uncomfortable. Cat's cheeks had blushed red, as red as her signature lipstick, and she instinctively brought her fingertips up to them. They were always cool due to bad circulation, which ran in the family. Her fingertips, ice cubes on a hot summer day, melted. The blush spread to them, too.

"And some of the wording," Herb maneuvered a clawed finger over her laptop's trackpad, her cast of bracelets making clangs against the table with the slight movement. "is abhorrent. Listen."

Cat had no other option but to do just that.

"He carved his name into her body with each sputter of his hips into her. When he was done, it was punctuated by her release. The force seared him like he had her, and they were marked, forever belonging to one another." 

Herb removed her metal-rimmed glasses and looked at Cat from across her desk, eyes brazen, begging for an explanation.

Cat had nothing. 

"I- My friend thought it was romantic."

"To virgins." Herb scuffed. "Is your friend a virgin?" 

No, ironically. 

Unbothered, Herb returned her glasses to the wide bridge of her nose. She continued with her comments, sending Cat's literary confidence deeper into the trash bin. 

"I could read this," She referred to the chapter she had open on her laptop, "and feel absolutely nothing. In fact, I do. They're supposed to be fυcкing, right?"

Cat nodded meekly.

"So have them be really fυcкing." Herb balled her fist for emphasis and Cat's stomach balled with it. "Whose perspective are you focusing on?"

"Sort of switching between the two."

"Don't," Herb said. "It makes it too unattached and messy. Instead, focus on a perspective you can relate to: the woman's."

All the blood left Cat's face.

"It seems too out of body. Describe what it's really like to be fυcкed: the feeling of his weight on her, the sweat on her back that makes the sheets stick to it, how she can feel every vein of his—"

"I get it," Cat said sharply. She held up a hand to halt Herb from further drilling a hole in Cat's eardrums through her imagery and began making a note on her laptop about Herb's point. She was far less descriptive. 

"Do you?" Herb's eyebrows, filled in pink to match the fluff of cotton candy that sat on top of her head, shot up. The editor moved her laptop softly aside as she adjusted her glasses, eyes flickering shut. They opened, Herb's chin on folded hands, and grey eyes as silvery as a scalpel were on Cat, ready to cut in.

Cat swallowed.

No. That was the honest truth. She didn't get any of the descriptions Herb described — she couldn't feel them, place herself in them—because the reality was she had never been fυcкed. 

Physically. Metaphorically, student loans and bills had done a great job of fυcкing her for the last couple of years.

But she couldn't tell Herb that. Herb was her editor, and despite how inappropriate and intimate some of their meeting contents were, there was a professional line that Cat wouldn't cross. She didn't consider Herb a friend, rather, a colleague, and with most of her friends uninformed of her virginal status, Herb certainly wasn't going be enlightened any time soon.