Deep End

by Ali Hazelwood

I’m a stack of hypersensitivities in a trench coat—but

because for her lying doesn’t require two to three business days of careful preparation,

I can be brave. I can be anything for noodles.

Maybe I finally reached puberty at the geriatric age of twenty-one.

It’s so European in there, I had to get out before my dick turned into a bidet.”

If only googling whether someone hates me were a possibility.

decided to make a mental note for future me. Highly susceptible to inspirational messaging. Must NOT join cult.

For now, we’re just two kinky people, checking in with each other and figuring it out. I wonder if something like this birthed the expression fuck around and find out.

“Oh, sweetheart.” My belly swoops at the endearment. His tone lives somewhere between sympathy and amusement. “If you don’t think that I’m very aware of your presence, always, you have no idea what’s going on.”

I get to take you apart and split you open—but if anything else, anyone else makes you feel sad, upset, cracked, I also get to be the one who puts you back together. Until you say stop. You get it?”

“I fuck you because you’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever felt, Scarlett.”

His eyes are, frankly, ridiculous. So green, they might be responsible for the deforestation of eastern Madagascar.

I’ll make you as smooth as a nineteenth-century brothel’s satin sheets.”