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ride

verb. an eponymous type of cymbal in the standard drum kit.

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a / n :

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Here's two new chapters as a gift!

I hope everyone got some sort of positive feeling out of this festive season, because (I'm sure we're all feeling it) current events and the world in general seem to have gone downhill since 2020. My thoughts are with those who did not feel touched by any seasonal magic this winter. Times are hard.

Now that I've finished writing Double Time offline, I realized Bay came along at the perfect time in my life. For anyone feeling ground down, burned out, unwilling to care anymore, just wanting to numb out and go into survival mode, I get it. Bay gets it (or she will; she's got a long way to go still, and we're all going to learn with her). 

I hope you are enjoying the story so far!

aimee x

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IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST, one week before band camp starts, I have a sex dream about Callum.

I am transported back to the freshman-year band party where we kissed for the first and only time. In the dream we are confined in a small bathroom with thumping music just outside the door.

"Okay," I say, "Wait," and then his mouth is on mine.

Callum surges forward, lifting me to sit on the edge of the sink, pressing me hard against the cool glass of the mirror. One hand cups my face, tilting my lips closer to his, and the other snakes around my waist. I open for him, letting his tongue slide in and explore every inch. A tiny moan escapes my mouth.

"Shh," Callum hushes, a cheeky smirk falling onto his face.

"No-one can hear us."

"No-one?" he whispers into my neck. "Alright."

The implication is clear in his low, shaking voice: then we can get loud as we like. Why the dream uses every cliché known to pornographers, I don't know. In a split second, he's shoved my t-shirt (at the actual party, I wasn't wearing just a thin t-shirt as a dress, but apparently in the dream I am) up my hips and unzipping his jeans. Pushing the waistband down, his body strains through two layers of underwear against me. I swear I can feel his blood pulsing, hot and hard. I hold very, very still.

My eyes watch his; below I hear fabric rustling and feel his warm fingers slide my panties aside. Callum's cock is so warm, soft and smooth against me. His movements lose all grace and care as my hips are jerked forward, one hand lining himself up. The change in body weight makes me snap my hands to the rim of the sink, bracing my upper half.

My lower back twinges, a small echo of pain from where the faucets press into my flesh, an echo completely smothered by the intense pleasure of him sliding home. And before I can whimper or moan or scream, Callum's hand is around my neck, tensing enough to steal my voice. (I have a kink about that.)

Callum thrusts slowly but roughly against me, the hand not choking me squeezing a bruise into my hip. Outside the bathroom, the noises of the party fall to a muffled minimum.

I have to stretch around him, feel every plunge, the friction against my G-spot on each retreat and each entry. My hips roll independent of my brain, bucking into his body.

"Fuck," he swears, lowering his head to bite my shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark. "I didn't know."

I can't reply because I am speechless. Both by his hand, and by the sheer, blistering pleasure being pumped into my body. He bites my earlobe, holding me motionless when he slams into me and pauses, lips trembling against my cheek as he breathes raggedly.

Callum grinds against me, seated to the hilt, and his finger snakes down to dust over my clit, again, again. My core pulses around his length, hot and wet and needy.

"It's okay. You can let go."

And then I—

—wake up.

I lie in bed furious with myself, but not surprised.

Another thing to know about me. I am an expert liar, to others, but most importantly to myself. When it comes to Callum, I can never be fully honest with myself.

He is not supposed to incite this type of reaction in me, but he does. I am not supposed to entertain these types of thoughts about him, but I do. Ever since we kissed in freshman year, I've been having sex dreams about Callum at roughly seasonal frequency, once every three months, give or take.

I bury these occurrences for three reasons: 1) the human brain uses dreams to process short term memories, and as someone I see often, Callum's face is simply a piece of sensory material that shows up in my dreams more often. I have sex dreams about all types of people: teachers, classmates, even Renata now and again.

2) The sex dreams have less to do with Callum and more to do with sex. Namely, my lack of it. Usually if I get laid after the dreams, they stop completely. For a while. I start dreaming about the new person. For a while. It's like an in-built warning system for my libido, a low-water warning for a city entering drought. I, the city; the drought, sexual.

3) Maybe I am attracted to Callum. So what? Attraction doesn't imply emotion. Whatever Fantasy Callum does, the real Callum is my bandmate, my rival, and my headache. I'm not blind, I can see his height. His face. His body, though the clothes he wears are usually baggy, in line with his skater boy aesthetic. I notice his charm and how easily other people fall in love with him.

In pit, freshman year, I had to watch from the sidelines as he strode out onto the field, dressed in a crisp burgundy uniform. The geometric shoulders, the breadth of his chest, the jacket that tapered down his torso in unblemished planes. When he played, it was like the stadium lights were a spotlight just for him.

I'm attracted to drummers. It means they're good with their hands. And Callum's hands. I can't ignore those. He makes my blood boil, both ways, all ways.

Further implications? None. These are just superficial traits that I appreciate in a detached, objective way. I resent my biology for even making me rationalize this to myself, sweaty and drowsy, first thing in the morning.

I kick the sheets off my damp body and rise to use the bathroom. Dreams are just electrostatic anomalies in a twitching, greasy hunk of meat. Nothing of substance lies between Callum and me. Nothing but competition.

I probably just need to get laid.

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I've picked up a lot more shifts at the Foxhole since all the rest of our student workers have gone home.

I dress in my usual work uniform, a black t-shirt and plain denim jeans. The black apron worn by all Foxhole staff goes into my Science Faculty tote bag. I preen in the bathroom mirror before walking down the residential street where all the on-campus apartments are. 

I'll arrive for the five to ten night shift. Today had killer heat, but now that it's nearly five p.m. the air is balmy, my shadow stretching long over strips of dry grass and russet bricked pavements. I take a right at the northbound vein of Halston's campus and follow it all the way to the bar.

Business is slow in summer for student bars. It's my favorite time of year to work, because there are no mad party rushes but I still get paid. It also breaks up the tedium of summer school, and helps pass the days until I can see Renata again. 

Over the last couple of months, when the weather was particularly beautiful, I tried to pack a towel and bus to the beach or buy a sub to eat in the park, but this month particularly, I've relapsed into my reclusive ways. Yes, the sun is lovely and the sky is clear for miles, but I have assignments, shifts, dinner to cook, and am scraping the bottom of the barrel for fucks to give about serotonin or vitamin D or tanning or whatever the benefits of going outside are.

In the Foxhole, there are some people around; I converse with them to pass the monotonous lull that is a weekday shift and hear stories about postgraduate studies, research internships, academic training, summer school students like me, and international students like my flatmates.

One customer, handsome with shiny black hair and a faint beard, intelligent, twenty-five years old, expresses an interest when I mention the marching band. But it turns out his interest is rooted in a foreign appreciation for the spectacle of American college football instead of music. He's memorized the HU fight songs and team statistics like someone collecting Pokemon cards, a childlike fascination laid before me.

I know the football team as intimately as any bystander can, and it is as intimate as I want to get. Pre-game, halftime, post-game, for the last three years I've played in the shows, and for the rest of the duration, I've watched in the stands as our Halston Foxes ran and tackled their way to an, honestly, average win streak. There are a few standouts, like the Tanner twins—the identical linebacker and wide receiver, I can't tell which is which, though—but overall the boys football team is okay, just okay.

I consider the marching band a way more successful team. More exciting, too, because there are ways to reinvent the craft. Bands up their game every season, new themes, new formations. Football is so cut and dry, but no-one ever goes wild over drumming and choreography the way they do over touchdowns. And I suppose touchdowns do fund our new marching snares.

The man, after finishing a long, drunken dinner with the rest of the people on his research team (according to him), walks up to put a twenty in the tip jar and asks me, "So what do beautiful American girls do after their work shifts?"

I have to stop myself grinning like a shark. I've been looking to have sex, get Callum off my mind.

I like this stranger's abstraction. Instead of 'what are you doing after your shift?' he's protected himself with a conceptual layer of distance. It's so shy, so roundabout; I already know I'm not going to give him my number or full name (he already knows my first, from my name tag). Just one memory, one night.

I was going to smoke after my shift tonight, but having sex is a worthy alternative. One drug for another. I shrug, smiling. "I don't have plans after my shift. Should we make some?"

He smiles back. At the end of my shift, the stranger is waiting for me at the personnel entrance to the Foxhole, where I specified.

"What's your name again?"

"Justin," he tells me. "I'm sorry, and yours again?"

By now I've taken my apron and name tag off. With a smile, I tell him, "Imogen."

I slip my hand into his and we talk about his research (analyzing Eastern seaboard civics education curricula and whether they actually increase voter turnout). I'm genuinely interested; I like learning things from other people. I find that knowledge and intelligence can be accrued so passively by just remaining intrigued in everything, all the time.

I ask pertinent questions, poking holes into the methodology, and Justin sighs, as if he expected my criticisms. "Well, there's ethics approval and funding hurdles involved. Privacy is a huge issue where our data is concerned. We would do things differently if people and money weren't factors."

"People and money," I repeat, glancing sideways at him as we pass under the milky yellow light of a street lamp. "It's always that."

"So true."

Then we get to Justin's apartment—I say hi to his roommate, another twenty-five-year-old-ish graduate student—and he takes me to his bedroom. He asks me if I need water, to use the bathroom, and if I wanted him to call an Uber to go home: "just, you know, so you know you don't have to do anything you don't want to." Courteous.

I take him up on the bathroom offer and use a baby wipe between my legs—I mean, I've just come a long shift at the Foxhole. The foreplay lasts longer than I need it to. I think Justin wants me to orgasm when he goes down on me, but I've never orgasmed with another person before. I can do it on my own, in the privacy of my own room, but with another person—man or woman alike—nothing will get me there. Not even if they follow my exact instructions. I consider it a sexual defect. I've done some research; apparently orgasms are as much mental as they are physical. Sometimes being mentally closed off to physical intimacy will prevent orgasming with a partner.

When I read this I thought, with great irony, the universe was playing a funny trick on me. We'll traumatize Bay so that she can be physically vulnerable but not mentally vulnerable, and then make the mental vulnerability a prerequisite for her to orgasm.

A-ha ha ha.

Justin fucks me with one hand gripping the bed's headboard and the other keeping himself elevated above me. Between my legs I'm essentially numb, though I'm trying to conjure up the sensations that exist when I'm alone. Knowing his roommate is around, I breathe in quick bursts through my nose and suck on his shoulder when his thrusts get arrhythmic, which seems to make him unwind inside me with juddering gasps. He buries himself deep and I finally feel an inkling of pleasure as his thrusts slow down.

I look to the ceiling, and suddenly my mind conjures ash blond hair and strong, sculpted hands, gripping my flesh, fucking me with long, powerful thrusts. Yes, Callum. My lower half pulses once, a tight aching squeeze, and Justin hisses with pleasure. Try as I might, I can't push the images away even when I'm with someone else. Verboten territory. Absolutely forbidden.

My brain needs to stop using Callum as masturbatory fodder. Firstly, I don't think he'd appreciate that version of himself living in my mind. Secondly, he's probably bad at sex anyway. At least, that's what I like to think.

Justin inches himself out of me and dots kisses on my breasts. We shower together and then fall asleep together. It's like both of us are acting out a script from a Hollywood rom-com about a one night stand, this postgrad student and bartender who have amazing witty banter and aesthetic, saliva-less sex.

When Justin asks to cuddle me for the night (I wanted to walk home but he seemed stricken at the idea of a young woman doing that at night; it's strange, how numb I am to fear) I'm so surprised. Cuddling? Me?

I entertain the idea that he actually might like me but in the morning, despite all the niceties and breakfast-cooking, he doesn't ask for my number or social media. He is just acting to the script. Knew it. Why do I doubt myself?

So Imogen leaves, rather happily, and Isabella hopes she never has to see Justin's face at the Foxhole again.