The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

The Seduction of Genesis Lee

Previously: "The Way We Are Now" 

Oh my God, I'm kissing him I can't believe it I'm actually kissing Blake O'Brien and he made the first move so actually he's kissing me!

Whatever Blake does to Genesis, he's doing it to you too, because your brain is making a noise like twenty calliopes blasting away inside an exploding fireworks factory.

But even as Genesis's brain flips out, the very cold and uninvolved brain of Will Prescott is much less impressed. When you get down to it, Blake's mouth and tongue are, at best, just a mouth and tongue.

And having the mouth and tongue of another person, particularly another guy, inside your own, is (when you think further about it) kind of—

Alright, let's not think about that, let's not go down that road, you tell yourself. Instead, you force yourself to relax, and ride the boiling surf of Genesis Lee's hormones.

* * * * *

Blake holds you close, his arms wrapped around you. He snuffles lightly at your temple, at your cheek, and inside your hair. He smells wonderful (no he doesn't, he smells like Ivory soap) and his skin is warm and flushed, and his clothes rustle softly as he alternately squeezes and releases you.

"This is really interesting," you murmur. "Is it interesting for you?"

"Yes."

That's not really an answer. But "interesting" isn't really an observation either, is it?

After breaking off the kiss, you and Blake had fumbled uncertainly with each other. It's easiest to let yourself be dragged along by Genesis's ardor for Blake—or for his body, which technically is what you're embracing back—but you also kept enough control to tap on the brakes. It's not only that you're not so keen about getting intimate with Blake O'Brien's body. You're supposed to be Blake-trapped-in-Genesis's-body, and would he be getting off on himself?

Well, you'd have to grudgingly admit that he's a much more attractive specimen of the physical male than you were, with a fitter body and a more masculine face. But would he be turned on by himself? It's true that you were turned on by your pedisequos when you were with it, but only when you were being influenced by Sydney's emotions. Of course, the real Blake would be influenced by Genesis's emotions too, so—

"You're really quiet," Blake says.

"I'm thinking," you reply after a moment's hesitation. "You're quiet too. Are you thinking?"

"Sure."

"What about?"

Blake doesn't answer. "You're not worried about what I'll say, are you?" you ask.

He sighs. "I don't know what I'm thinking," he replies. "I'm thinking but I don't know what. I guess that sounds weird."

"It's been a weird day."

"Oh my God," he murmurs, "is that ever an understatement." He's lapses into a long silence, then says, "I guess we should start telling us about each other. If I have to go back to your house and pretend to be you—"

"I don't want to think about that," you interrupt.

"I don't either. But—"

You feel him freeze, and he pulls away from you. "Are you scared, Blake?" he asks.

Damn. "Yes," you admit. "I want to run away from it all."

That much is true, though Genesis won't understand the real meaning behind your confession. It's the moment that she is pressing on you—the moment when you and she will have to start telling each other about yourselves—that you can't bring yourself to face, for that's the moment you'll be exposed as an imposter, and this half-assed plan of yours will completely collapse. (I told you, told you, told you so! Sydney will sing at you while capering.) So you want to run away and do something else—anything else—but face up to that moment.

The chance to do "anything else" comes when Blake picks up your comment and runs off with it in an unexpected direction.

"You mean run away together?" he says. "Leave town, change our names, start over?"

Your heart drums hard on the inside of your chest. It's like Genesis's most amazing fantasy come to life! He wants to throw everything away and run off with me and be with me forever and it'll just be us, together forever! It's the most impossible, most swoon-worthy thing ever!

In a flash it all comes to you. You and Blake scraping out a living in a weatherbeaten shack, its boards cracked and warped by a blistering sun that has pancaked the prairie into a dusty emptiness. Every morning he leaves to scrape a few bucks from his job in the oil fields, and every night he returns, exhausted and filthy, to your shack, where you nourish him with simple but healthy food you cooked with love. He is sinewy and sweaty in his muddy jeans and boots and his torn undershirt. The hair beneath his cowboy hat is parched and dry, and when he pulls off dusty work gloves, his hands are hard and callused. You knead the weariness from his shoulders as he eats, and when you are washing up, he sneaks up behind to grip your shoulders and puts lips and teeth to the back of your neck.

And then you're in bed together, the room lit only by metallic moonlight, and he is drilling again, but it is into the moist, yielding loam of your own loins that he is drilling, and it is to plant something there, not extract it, that he drills with a passion that would crack the earth in twain were he to expend it in the oil fields ...

In a daze, you lift your face to his and ask, "What time do you have to be home?"

He blinks. "Me or you?"

"I don't have to go home," you improvise. "I can stay out all night. So you don't have to go back to my house, not if you don't want to. What about you? Can you stay out?"

"No, not all night."

"Not even just once? Would they kill you, your parents, if you didn't come home until ... tomorrow morning?"

His dark eyes widen. "Where would we hang out?"

You don't know any of any weatherbeaten shacks in the middle of any dusty plains. But Genesis knows a boy and a girl can spend the night, if they've got money, though she herself has never been to any such place.

* * * * *

You and Blake sit on the edge of the bed for the longest time. The sun is falling toward the western horizon, and its orange light comes blasting through the thin curtains strung across the small window. The room is stifling.

Blake had blanched when you suggested spending the night at the Donna Motor Courts. Do you want people to know where we went? he asked. Because if someone sees us there—

Who would see us? you ask.

Doesn't everyone know about the Donna? And Kim Walsh, he stammered, someone told me her family owns it. Yes, now that she's reminded you, Genesis has heard that the president of the student council is connected to the Donna.

But Genesis gave in when you modified your suggestion. So now here you are checked into another cheap, dingy motel on the same fading boulevard: The Layzee-Nites Motel.

The walls are painted cinderblock and the seawater-green rug is woven of hard, scratchy fibers. The bedspread is orange and has the slick feel of spun plastic. But there's a small flatscreen TV sitting on the bureau opposite the foot of the bed, and it has a clean smell. After checking out all the facilities to ensure everything worked, you and Blake settled onto the edge of the bed, side by side, hands on your knees.

Neither of you is touching the other, and you're very conscious that Blake is avoiding looking at you, just as you're avoiding look at him. All the same, neither of you can keep from shooting furtive, awkward glances at the other, and noticing the furtive, awkward glances that are being shot back.

"You wanna watch TV?" Blake finally asks. "We could talk. We still need to get to know each other."

"No," you tell her firmly. "I don't want to talk about us. What I mean is," you hastily add as Blake's face falls, "I want to talk about—"

But you don't know how to finish that sentence. There's nothing you can talk about that might not be exposed—if Blake's memories start coming to her—as something Blake wouldn't know or talk about.

"I want you to talk about us," you declare in a spur decision. You feel your face light up: Genesis's instincts tell you that she'd like that. "I'm not big on talking, and I'm kind of stressed out. But you tell me everything that you know. Everything you're feeling. I'll listen."

Blake takes a deep breath and pushes his hair back. (He starts a little—surprised maybe at how short it is.) "I don't know if you'd be very interested in me," he says.

"Genesis, look at me." You give her a direct stare, and let your lips twitch into a small smile. "I think I'd be very interested in you."

Blake's lips also twitch, and the sharp dimples that briefly slash across his cheeks give you a hard quiver below your diaphragm. "Well, I think I'd be interested in you too."

"Are you?" You let your smile deepen.

He blushes hard, and his eyes fall. Well, if that isn't a giveaway, you think. It would be a giveaway even if those flashes of erotic fantasy you've been suffering weren't giveaways too.

You're not sure how long you can keep avoiding the biographical details. You shut her up for a little while at the park, when you kissed. Now you're in a motel room. You have a long time to kill.

And a long way of killing it.

Next: "Getting to Know All About You" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"