Mafia Desire (Erotica)

The Fall semester started at college and life became busy again for both of us. My classes were mostly in the fine arts building, while the majority of Amy’s were in the business building on the far end of campus. It meant we wouldn’t see each other as much on campus as we would have liked, but that was probably for the best if we had any hope of keeping up appearances. There were still a few hours here and there, those unfortunate gaps between classes that made the school day last longer, where one or the other of us had enough free time to make the journey across campus to see each other for a moment. Twice a week there was even an hour long gap that we both had free.

I was in Dr. Miller’s art class again, but this time around Dr. Miller wasn’t as confrontational with me. To be fair, I wasn’t as stubborn of a student with him either. I guess I did have the potential to be a dick occasionally. He even invited me to participate in the Fall art show. My art history class was going to be a bit daunting, I decided, after seeing the size of the text book. Amy was excited about her classes, especially her finance class. How anyone could get that excited about math and economics was beyond my comprehension.

Amy became a common fixture in the art building those two days a week when we could meet up on campus. Because we both knew too many people on campus, we had to keep our relationship under wraps. It was not uncommon for guys to come up and try to flirt with her in my presence. She always let them down gently, giving them a story about a boyfriend off campus. I wasn’t bothered by it at all anymore. It was even mildly amusing to watch, as I learned that guys are not as smooth as they generally think they are when they try to flirt with a woman.

Megan was around the art building, of course, and while Amy was never anything but polite, I picked up on the tiniest hint of irritation when Megan would visit with us. Of course, this could have to do with Meg’s physical nature, as she often greeted me with a hug and would linger a perceptible second too long when she had occasion to touch me. Megan knew that I had a serious girlfriend now that was not attending the college and that none of our mutual friends had met. She once asked Amy if she had met my mysterious girlfriend, which made for a surreal conversation.

Amy mischievously described a fictional blonde girl named Marie, who was so loud in bed that Amy had once threatened to record us and put it on the internet so that she could finally get some sleep. I had smiled to myself at the name “Marie” as it was Amy’s middle name. She then told the breakfast bite mark story, enjoying my embarrassment, changing the name of the suspected biter from Megan to that of my fictional girlfriend. That had made Megan give me quite a look, given that we used to sleep together and I had never caused her lose her self control to that level. Then again, I hadn’t exactly tried. I only shrugged, somewhat bashfully at the look that Megan gave me. She had excused herself rather quickly after that conversation, to Amy’s complete amusement.

At home, she continued to sneak into my room almost nightly once everyone had gone to bed. We did not dare have sex with our parents home as we both had no faith in her ability to keep quiet during intercourse, but we spent a lot of time keeping each other sexually satisfied in other ways. Our parents appeared to be still oblivious to our relationship, and we remained vigilant in keeping it that way. We found that our lives sort of fell into two halves, almost like two separate worlds.

There was the “outside world” where we had to interact with other people and maintain some kind of distance from each other and the “our world” that we fell into when we were alone. We tried our best to keep ourselves in that kind of a mindset, which made it easier to keep our forbidden relationship a secret. While we never exactly discussed the “rules” of the “outside world”, we more or less understood them. We kept physical contact to a minimum. We purposely antagonized one another over petty things like we had done pretty much since birth. And we made a point of doing things separately with our friends. I still went out to the bar occasionally with John and the rest of the guys. She would go clubbing with her friends most weekends. Of course, this meant that we were usually the first ones to leave the bar or club so that we could get back home to each other.ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

Midway through the semester, the owners of the music store I worked for informed me that they were going out of business. It was not unexpected in the ever increasing digital era, but it was still disappointing. Finding myself temporarily unemployed, I was totally shocked when Dr. Miller offered me a position as his teaching assistant, which extended to helping him with things at his personal art studio. This was the kind of job offer that most of the art students on campus would kill for. I readily accepted the job, to Amy’s complete delight.

* * *

One Friday afternoon, I came home from class and set about working on a new canvas for the upcoming Fall art show. Amy was going to a friend’s after work and wouldn’t be home until late. I spent about an hour on it before I heard my mother call for me from downstairs. I went downstairs wiping the paint from my hands on a heavily stained dishrag and found her in the kitchen, working on dinner.

“How was class?” She asked.

“Fine. I got my art history paper back today. I scored a 92 on it.” I replied, quite relieved about that paper. Art History often bored the piss out of me.

“That’s great, honey.” She paused slicing up a bell pepper to look up at me. Something was clearly on her mind.

“Do you know if Amy has a boyfriend?” She asked me after a pregnant pause. I found myself cocking an eyebrow, curious where this was going.

“Not that she’s mentioned. Why?” I tried not to sound as wary as I felt.

“It’s just that she used to date all the time. I haven’t heard her so much as mention a boy in a couple of months now. I’m not sure if I should be worried about her or not. Does she seem okay to you?”

“She seems fine to me, mom.” I replied, dialing my hidden panic meter back down a couple of notches. This conversation wasn’t headed where I initially feared it may be. “You remember that dickhe- er.. Sorry, mom. You remember that jerk she was seeing, Jeff? He cheated on her and really hurt her feelings. I think she’s just taking a break for a little while from dating after that. But I think she’s fine.”

Thankfully, she elected to ignore my cursing. Normally, I’d have gotten a bit of a tongue lashing for that. It didn’t matter how old I was, it was still her house. In her younger days, Amy had seen it as her personal mission in life to report me for every foul word that ever crossed my lips within earshot, despite her being the root cause of most of them.

“I guess so.” Mom replied. “It’s just not like her, you know? She should be out having the time of her life right now.”

“I’m sure she’s fine.” I certainly hoped that she was having the time of her life, as well. Just not quite the way that our mother did.

“You’ll keep an eye on her at school, right? Make sure she doesn’t fall for the wrong guy?” She added.

“I can try, mom. She doesn’t exactly value my opinion in the dating department.” I felt the guilt stabbing me in the chest, feeling like my baby sister perhaps had fallen for exactly the wrong guy. The last guy she should ever fall for, in fact.

“I know, but you two are getting along really well these days.. Just try to watch out for her is all I ask.”

“Sure. I’ll do what I can.” I replied, noncommittally. I felt bad about my relationship with Amy for the first time in a long while. It was one thing to not mention it to people and hide it. Directly lying about it to our mother was harder. Harder than I had expected.

“Thanks, sweetie. Dinner will be ready in about an hour. Love you.”

“Love you too, mom.” I replied and went back upstairs.

I didn’t fully exhale until I retreated to the relative safety of my bedroom. While our mother clearly had no idea about us, that entire exchange rattled me. I went to my computer and turned the music back on. I paced back and forth in front of the canvas for a while, trying to shake the darkened mood that I was slipping into. My mother’s words “the wrong guy” kept repeating in my head, feeling like I was very much the wrong guy, even if I was the only one who seemed to realize that. I paced more, feeling my chest tighten. My eyes bored holes in the black canvas in front of me. An image began to form in my mind… I grabbed the paint knife from my shelf and set to work.

I painted with an almost feverish intensity, working entirely in shades of black and white. I painted straight through dinner, never hearing the call that the food was ready. I kept layering on white paint, then scraping much of it away with the paint knife. Then I’d layer on black paint and scrap it the same way. Ghostly smears remaining behind. Subtle, mournful faces emerged from the background. Walls of tall, ominous shades of gray towered over them. Figures, not fully defined and only hinted at, cowered in the corners of the canvas, their faces covered in shame. The knot in my stomach finally began to loosen it’s intense grip on me, as I wrapped up working on it for the night.

I backed away from the canvas a moment to take in what I had done so far. My now black and gray forearms ached from how hard I had been gripping the paint knife. The shorts I generally painted in, the ones with the yellow hand prints all over them, were now heavily flecked in black and white, like a wearable Jackson Pollock canvas. With a heavy sigh, I dropped to my knees in front of it and closed my eyes wearily. I sat on the floor that way for several long minutes, emotionally drained and exhausted.

A small, gentle hand came to rest on my shoulder. I almost flinched from it, but recognized the touch immediately and caught myself. I looked up at Amy’s beautiful face to see a worried expression staring back at me.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

Instead of replying, because I was unsure of what to say, I buried my face in her hip. For once, I remembered the paint all over my hands and didn’t hug her. She placed a worried hand on the back of my head, holding me to her. She smelled so fucking wonderful to me, as always.

“I’m going to go take a shower, real quick. I’m a damned mess.” I stood up and tossed the paint rag on the drop cloth by the rest of my art crap.

“I’ll try to explain when I get out, okay?”

She nodded, still looking concerned, but not wanting to push the issue just yet.

I had been in the shower for a few minutes, collecting my thoughts and scrubbing my forearms clean. I was watching the paint from my arms create a gray line of water racing toward the drain, when the shower door opened and Amy, now fully naked, stepped in to join me.

“Are you nuts? What if one of them comes upstairs?” I gave her an alarmed look.

“They’re asleep. They won’t come up.”