Soul-Tied

CW: Includes graphic sexual content and themes of mental health struggles

I almost choked on my fork. It’s been so long since anyone has made me laugh like that.

Through teary eyes, I anxiously searched for reactions from neighboring tables. Glares, scoffs, whispers. Just as I suspected. In other words, this was a half-decent restaurant and I needed to shut up.

I looked down at the used cloth napkin on my lap and tried to focus on it so I could, indeed, shut up. There’s nothing funny about a napkin. The laughing stopped.

Until I looked up again. He had been trying to saw a fingerling potato with his butter knife, and the slippery thing got out from under him and shot off his plate, rolling only so far as to bump toes with the patrons to his right. Glares, scoffs, whispers. Who cares. I started laughing again.

His sickening blue eyes watched my cheeks transform into those of a three-year-old’s who had gotten into mommy’s blush. He wasn’t embarrassed about his mistake; he just started sawing another potato. He was trying to make me laugh.

It was sweet, and it was working.

Between stifled giggles, I noticed someone making a beeline for our table. A waiter, of course, or even perhaps the owner, certainly rushing to tell us to pipe down or get lost.

It became clear to me that, as she was wearing neither uniform nor suit, she was not a waitress or CEO.

Interesting. She was undoubtedly headed straight for us. Perhaps she was returning one of our lost potatoes. A most noble thing to do.

She moved with schoolgirl confidence, refusing to introduce herself before she possessively threw her arm around my comedian and spat, “I was here first.” The way she said it implied a great deal, further supported by the way she slinkied around him with no shame, their faces touching, her arms hurriedly gliding across his back and neck.

“What are you doing?” I spat back.

She continued. “Every first you had with him, he first had with me.”

I was dumbfounded. I looked at my companion’s face. He didn’t even acknowledge her, somehow. He just held eye contact with me, smiling at me like he had been this whole night, seemingly ignoring her, maybe in the hopes that she would soon return to wherever she came from.

My stomach sank and I honestly didn’t know what to do. This had never happened to me before. To be fair, this probably hadn’t happened to a lot of people.

I anxiously glanced around at our neighbors once again. No one was looking at us now. How her audacious public display of affection was getting less attention than my laughing was beyond me.

She continued to possessively drape herself over him. They both held eye contact with me, for whatever individual reasons I’m not entirely sure.

I could feel the blood pumping through my body. Every ounce of life within me wanted this woman to leave. He wasn’t mine yet, but he definitely wasn’t hers either— he was wholly pretending like she wasn’t there.

I looked at the dark corner of the room she seemed to have emerged from, possibly wondering if I could spot something there that was powerful enough to send her back. There, a taller and fuller figure– certainly her mother– gracefully lifted her arm and unapologetically waved at me. She was proud of her daughter, it seemed. It seemed she had been watching us this whole time. It almost looked like she was going to come over here, too.

My companion noticed the mother, somehow. He turned around and pleasantly waved to her, still ignoring her daughter.

“First,” the daughter hissed again, slithering around his body like it was her right. “Everything. It was all me, I will always be first.” She would look at him, then look at me, bragging. It repulsed me.

Finally, he said something. “Are you okay?” He was looking at me intently, reaching out his hand to put over mine.

I pulled back. Am I okay? Seriously? And how could he shamelessly offer to hold my hand? That’s where that woman’s had just been. Except, she was gone now. Her mom too; I checked. They had disappeared. I guess I blacked out.

I crumpled up, squeezing myself like an orange, but only sweat dripped off my skin. I felt cold and hot, tight and all over the floor.

I had never seen the facade he wore until that moment. It was confusion, if not worry. I felt it.

It was only then that I noticed the face I had been making. I tried to fix it, but it wasn’t convincing enough.

“Are you upset?” he asked.

I felt like I could throw up. Certainly that would get everyone’s attention again, right? Or was it just the launched potatoes that were upsetting, not the strange woman crawling all over the man on a date in a nice, public restaurant? But she was gone now, so what point was there to say anything about it?

I shook my head.

“Are you okay?” he repeated.

I swallowed, deep and big. “Yeah. Sorry.”

He tried the potato thing again. I didn’t laugh, but I felt bad for him, so I cracked a smile.

I still couldn’t believe she did that. I hope she and her mom went back to whatever hellhole they came out of. And I couldn’t believe he was acting like she wasn’t there.

She was right there.

—

It was drizzling outside. Just a sprinkle, but enough to chill the air. I pumped myself up to leave the car, wondering why I never heeded the warnings about getting a jacket. I sent one final text, “Parked, I’ll walk fast, it’s sprinkling,” and checked my backseat one last time for a jacket. The sprinkle turned into a light rain. No jacket, but an umbrella. The light rain got a little heavier. Better than nothing.

I grabbed the umbrella, the rest of my stuff, and hopped outside. I’ve never minded the rain, but it was extra cold, so that changes things. I rested the umbrella on my shoulders, thankful for its protection, as I strolled down the path.

My walk was about halfway completed when I saw him in the distance. Barefooted, no jacket either, bounding rapidly toward me.

I smiled and matched his pace.

We met up in the middle of the sidewalk. He uncommittedly made a dramatic frowny face, his smile peeking through.

“What’s wrong? What are you doing?” I started, talking over the rain.

“I thought you might not have an umbrella,” he said.

I melted. “Oh, honey…” I gave him a little hug, but it was awkward, and our umbrellas clashed together.

We began the final stretch of the journey to his dorm together, two umbrellas covering me now. We only said a few words to each other, conserving our energy for warmth.

Then there were gentle footsteps behind us. I wouldn’t have heard them if not for the splash of puddles. It was a woman, approaching us from behind.

“You know,” she slyly butted between him and I but directed her words to me, “I had him wrapped around my finger first.” Her painted nails traced his face, having reached around the umbrella he was holding over me, but he didn’t notice. We just kept walking.

She looked at him, her eyes filled with lust and demand. “Anything I wanted…” She was foxy and entirely desirable. “...he would give me. I could tell him to bark for me, and he would say, ‘What kind of dog?’ He was all mine first.”

He reached out his arm and pulled me into him. It snapped me out of it. I put my umbrella down and he covered us both with his in silence. How romantic.

But he noticed my silence. “Are you okay?”

Again, she was gone. “Yeah, I’m fine, just cold.”

He pulled me closer.

—

“Are you sure you’re fine with my body?” I asked him one day. I’d been feeling more insecure lately.

“Yes, of course, you’re beautiful and hot and sexy.” He grabbed and squeezed me.

“But you’ve been with… I’m not as curvy as them.”

“What? Yes you are,” he retorted. He then decided, in that moment, that what I needed to hear was full descriptions of their physical forms, though he conveniently skipped one.

“...and Rebecca, she was lowkey flat, like, she was actually a really small person. But I don’t know, I just really wanted to-” he grunted and made a lurching movement, “throw her against a wall.”

I physically felt ill. How does he not hear it?

Just like that, she popped into the dorm room where the two of us lay. She heaved herself onto the bed, tiny little legs kicking, and crawled over to me instead of him this time.

She only stopped a few inches from my face, her palms resting on my crossed legs and her knees digging into the mattress.

“He wanted me,” she teased. “I wasn’t even his type, and he wanted me. He craved me. He felt something for me, you know it. You sense it.”

“Stop it,” I said to her, trying to distance myself from her body. She purred and wrapped herself around him.

“He felt more physical urges with me than anyone before. He’ll never feel that for you. He can’t throw you against the wall; you’re much too big for that. You know he’d rather have me.”

I shook him a little bit, trying to get his attention. “Hey-”

“You know, maybe he didn’t just want my body. Maybe he fell in love with me. I wasn’t his type, after all, and he still spent so much time in desperation, dreaming what he would do to me next-”

“What, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

—

I hate trying on new clothes. It always makes me feel too big or too small in whichever wrong places.

I got a new bra. I was nice, and I felt pretty good. I wanted to show it off to him.

He couldn’t control himself, immediately reaching out to squeeze my breasts. That made me happy. He must have liked it.

I’d had to size down on the bra, though, for the first time ever. It made me insecure. “Are they big enough for you?” I blurted out.

He stared up at me, mouth hanging open in offended shock. “Uh, yeah.” He gave another squeeze. “Actually, they might be the biggest I’ve ever had.”

I beamed in pride and confidence. “Really?”

“Yeah! Well-” he grabbed them both firmly, lifting them up and down a few times, running his hands over them, feeling the size and shape of them. “Hm,” he concluded, “if not the biggest, then a tie.”

Oh.

I knew he was trying to be honest. But him squeezing and weighing and comparing my body to the others… to the one I tied with… He remembered the feeling of them in his hands so well that he could scale them to each other. And to me.

I knew he just wanted to make me feel better. But all it did was put the image in my mind of him sucking on her perfect nipples and grabbing onto her (same-sized) breasts as he drilled into her from behind, sweating and sighing with her, giving it everything he had so she could feel pleased, week after week, month after month. Until he had memorized everything about them.

“...So yes, I love them, just the way they are,” he finished.

Great, thanks.

We continued the conversation, much to my chagrin. My curiosity was my downfall and, one by one, with each question, I unknowingly invited another girl into the room. And, one by one, they joined him and I. They talked over each other, reached over each other, and crowded around him as one unit. Shoving me further and further away from him.

He paid them no mind. He kept talking, I kept listening, they kept teasing. Their collective voice was deafening.

And they got in my head. “Do you have, like, a top score?” I asked. My stomach dropped as I said the words. I have no idea why I wanted to know. But I needed it. I wanted to know everything.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, in a 24-hour period. How many times…”

“Oh. Are you sure you want to know?”

That meant it was a lot. “Is it a lot?” My hands started shaking. It was embarrassing. I tried to cover it by squeezing myself tighter.

“It depends on what you think a lot is. Everyone has different definitions…”

I braced myself and just told him to tell me. The voices were getting too loud, and I was just… done.

He took a deep breath, pulling forward a memory. “Well, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it was eight-”

“EIGHT?” I blurted out.

And then silence. All of a sudden, all the girls’ voices stopped. They stopped touching him, too, and he stopped talking. Everything stopped, frozen in time. And from the corner, I heard a laugh.

A narrow beam of moonlight from a slit in the shades shone perfectly on her.

She didn’t stand or walk over. She didn’t immediately put her hands on him, like the others did. She just stayed in her chair in the corner.

I traced her shadowed outline. She was the one I tied with.

The second I tried to speak, she cut me off. “Who-”

“I can’t believe you,” she said. She laughed again. The shrill noise hardly sounded human. “You’re so pathetic.”

“Excuse you?” I stood, walking over to her, hovering over her.

“You heard me.” She wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. Unbothered, she even stayed seated. “He will always be addicted to me.” She raised her chin and confidently grinned.

I started to parrot everything he had ever consoled me with. “No. He said-”

“He said? Oh, well, if he said, then it must be true!” She smiled and giggled. “Please, you know the truth.” I felt a tingle of sweat in my palms. “He remembers. He remembers everything about me. He remembers every inch of me. He’s explored it over and over. He knows exactly what I like. He’s been using the same moves on you, I’ve been watching. I trained him to get me off, and that’s what you get. My leftovers.”

“No.”

“Oh yes. You know he was addicted to sex; he told you that, I was there. But it wasn’t just the physical act. He was addicted to sex with me. He wanted me so bad. All the time. He would ask- no, beg- to pleasure me. To use him as a tool for my enjoyment. And did I ever.”

I looked back at him. He was still lying on the bed, frozen. He couldn’t see her. No one could.

“He was animalistic with me. He wanted to do everything to me. Oh, the things he would do– he hasn’t even done them to you, and he probably never will.”

I repressed a cry. She finally stood up, towering over me.

“I showed him what true addiction was. And he will never get over that. You’ve heard him– he still remembers my size, and it’s been years! He still talks about me, his best friend. He still loves the way I tasted, remember him telling you that? Ha! Back then, I just told him it was the pineapple, but you know that doesn’t really do anything. What can I say, he just loves eating me, nose deep, devouring my insides until I squirm-”

“Shut up!” I shouted, shoving her away and dropping onto the ground. I wrapped my arms around my knees and my head.

She stumbled back but didn’t fall. “No, you shut up! You’re clearly not listening to me!” She took a few steps forward and then crouched on the ground, right in front of my huddled figure. She twirled my hair. “I made him thirst for me. I made him need me. Do you think you’ll ever be that important to him? You won’t be. Because everything you’ve been waiting your whole life to do with him, he’s already done a million times with me. Over. And over. And over. Sometimes even eight times in a row. And I can guarantee that we did it better than you ever will.”

“Stop!” I hysterically screamed, fully sobbing. That was the closest I ever came to being tortured. “Please, just stop it!” Tears streamed down my face.

Another giggle snuck out of her. “You haven’t changed…” Her voice trailed off for a moment, examining my face. She carefully selected one of my tears and used her finger to scoop it up. Sticking out her tongue, she licked it, then smirked. “That’s my good girl,” she whispered. And then she was gone.