Cape Cod, Massachusetts, August 2003

She meets him on a dreary and murky Monday afternoon. He comes swaggering in, all leather and cocksure smile and Maria is instantly put to mind of James Dean. She sighs when he spots her and smirking, changes his direction and heads straight for her. She loves her job - usually. But sometimes, having to deal with asshole tourists, like she's sure this guy is going to turn out to be, makes her question her sanity for working at the Madison before heading off to college.

He starts asking questions about old Mister Parsons, the former general manager of the place, who has been dead for well over twelve years now. She has vague memories of the man from when she was small, meeting him in the lobby after attending a matinée with her mother of Aesop's Fables. But all her recollections are misty, as if being viewed through cobwebs, and she can't tell if she's actually remembering these things about this man or if years and years of gossip have merged and melded in her mind to become a truth.

He might be cocky and too sure of him self but he really, really has reason to be. If Maria is going to be honest with herself, he makes her a bit nervous - most guys usually do. He asks some odd questions about the weird accidents that have been happening to the cast and crew and she answers, avoids looking him in the eye, busies her hands with straightening and re-straightening some brochures. Thankfully, after a few minutes, he seems to find out whatever he was after and leaves.

As she watches his broad shoulders bunch under his jacket as he walks away - leather in this heat, honestly - she can't help but feel a shoot of disappointment in her belly. He'd looked at her but he hadn't seen her, just like everyone else and she sighed as she went back to counting tickets and money.

...

Wednesday, she goes to her Uncle Donny's after work for a basket of clams and some fries. The strange man from Monday is a shadowy thought at the corner of her mind now, pushed aside by thoughts of Sarah Lawrence, packing up and starting the rest of her life in the matter of weeks. She has her course catalog opened and she's sipping on her iced tea through a straw when she sees him.

He's all alone in the corner, tearing up his paper napkins into tiny pieces and looking for all the world like a lost little boy, complete with a lonely look in his eyes. Maria sighs as she looks back at the page, at the description of Sarah Lawrence's Art History degree and closes it before making her way over to the corner table, stopping and biting her lip as he looks up at her, eyes widening in surprise.

"Um. I don't, uh, I don't usually do this but... seems silly for us both to be eating alone so. Um. You want some company?" She manages to get out and feels like a complete and utterly inarticulate fool. Not at all like someone who scored a seven-hundred and ninety-five on her verbal SAT's.

He smiles up at her, not the smarmy smile from the other day but one that she suspects is closer to his genuine smile and nods, gesturing at the seat across from his.

They exchange names although she thinks he might remember hers which makes her stutter for an instant. No one ever remembers who she is.

Thankfully, their food arrives quickly and she actually relaxes around him, unable not to when he dribbles butter down his chin and moans lowly in approval of her uncle's fresh lobster. She doesn't realize it until later but every time she asks him a question about his work - a reporter from some small newspaper down in NYC - or his life or friends, he answers vaguely or completely avoids the question and steers the conversation back to her.

By the end of the night, he knows her favorite book (Pride and Prejudice because inside, she's a hopeless romantic), her plans to go to Sarah Lawrence and major in Art History, that she intends to dye large chunks of her hair blue and that she has a fondness for smoking weed out on the beach late at night and watching the moon rise.

He offers to walk her out to her car when they're finished and she thinks it's kind of sweet so she says yes, not because she's afraid she'll get mugged in the middle of nowhere, Massachusetts. They walk slowly out to her small rusty Honda at the edge of the gravel lot and she fidgets some when they get there, her keys jangling noisily in the hot, muggy evening.

He squints against the setting sun and she opens her mouth to say goodbye but instead, his mouth covers hers. She gasps instead of wishing him goodbye and then clutches at his waist, the leather of his jacket smooth under her fingers. His hands are cupping her face and they smell of lemon and fish. His mouth is hot and wet and it's like nothing, nothing she's ever experienced before and she feels herself going weak and warm and willing as she kisses him back.

But as his hands slide down over her shoulders, toying with the straps of her tank she realizes where - and who - she is. And that she has no idea who or what he is. She pulls back and tries not to look at his red, slick lips and stammers out a goodbye, sliding in her car and driving away.

...

She sees him again two days after the kiss, back at the theater, lurking in the wings during a Neil Simon play. She loses him in the flurry of people during intermission, doesn't see him again until the show has ended, the theater emptied, hanging around the front doors, collar popped. She flushes when he sees her and smiles, thinks about how she'd touched herself the night before thinking about his hands and his smell, leather and something earthy, spicy, instead of answering the letter she'd gotten from her soon-to-be-roommate, her lights on and cat purring on the end of her tiny twin.

He makes his way over to her as she locks the doors, his hands deep in his pockets and she tries to quell how her legs shake, can't remember if she shaved her legs earlier in the shower, wonders if he has condoms.

Because she knows, deep down in her bones that tonight is the night. She wants to get it done and over with before college anyway and he's a much better prospect than any of the boys in town or any of the asshole tourists who come blowing through. He's a bit wild and rough-edged and uncouth but he noticed her, her and she can't ignore how lightheaded that makes her feel.

She scuffs her toe in the dirt when he smiles and she tells him she knows of a place they can go and talk. She shivers when he puts his arm around her as they walk towards his big black beast of a car, tries to ignore the butterflies in the pit of her stomach or the heat that is settling lower in the cradle of her hips from just the brush of his fingers against her arm.

They make the drive in a somewhat comfortable silence, his arm slung along the seat back, fingers toying with her hair every few minutes, Van Morrison low on the radio. She directs him in a quiet voice to her favorite spot, looking out at the water, stars sprinkled across the sky carelessly and the slow lap of waves against the shore. He takes a worn plaid blanket from the trunk and they walk hand in hand down close to the water's edge, the moon big and bright directly above them.

She sits down, arms wrapped around her waist and he follows, settling his leather jacket - who wears leather in the middle of the summer she wonders idly - over her shoulders. It smells like him and the inside of it, which is silky and smooth, still holds the warmth of his body and she shivers involuntarily. He settles next to her, bending low and breathing softly against her neck before placing a kiss on her jaw then lower over her pulse. She closes her eyes and tilts her head, fingers digging into the blanket beneath her, the sand shifting through her fingers and the layer of flannel.

He tilts her to face him, touch soft despite the calluses she can feel dotting his skin and meets her gaze.

"It's your first time, isn't it?" He asks, voice low and rumbling. She nods shakily and shivers a little at the intensity in his green eyes. He chuckles, his breath dancing across her skin as he slowly pushes her down.

"We'll go slow," he murmurs, hands bunching under her work shirt, popping buttons as he bends to place soft, wet, open-mouthed kisses on the trembling skin of her belly. She bites her lip, the sensations he's evoking strange and wonderful and scary and Maria can't help wondering if she's making a mistake. But then Dean's hands are under her skirt, opening her up, slipping under the damp material of her panties and that's it, she's done thinking. His fingers tease her, rubbing and stroking but never where she wants it, needs it most.

He chuckles when she grabs his wrist, forces him to stroke her where and how she wants. Nips at her neck when he bends down to whisper in her ear all the things he's going to do to her and then his fingers are gone, trailing damply over her thighs as he strips her bare on the blanket so that she's wearing only starlight and his touch. She flushes at his appraising gaze but does not give in to the urge to shield her flesh from his eyes. They meet hers, intense and unfathomable there in the dark night and he hurriedly strips out of his own clothes, presses a kiss to her soft mouth before pulling back, fingers once again delving between her thighs as he whispers in her ear about how beautiful she is, how lovely she looks spread out for him, how badly he wants to break her open with his cock.

She can't help it, she comes, wracking shudders taking her as she floods over his hand and fingers with wet. He soothes her through it, fingers unrelenting and his touch constant. He rolls away long enough to dig out a condom and she watches through glazed eyes as he slides it on, fingers deft, and then settles between her splayed thighs, hands firm on her thighs as he arranges her underneath him. She tries to help him, tries to move her limbs but she's sluggish with pleasure.

He circles the base of his dick with his fingers and then puts his other hand on her hip, fingers tracing over the thin skin there as he edges in, slowly. She lets her eyes fall closed at the feel of him breaching her, full and big and hard. She clutches at his shoulders as he shifts deeper, her body resisting at first, then slowly giving way with a tiny pop she can both hear and feel and it doesn't hurt, not really but it burns and he won't stop moving and she knows, distantly, that she's digging her nails into skin of his shoulders but she wants him out or to move or something. It's too much, too full, he's too big and then he stops and is just filling her and she pants as the burning eases. She relaxes her grip on him and he shifts his weight, his cock moving inside of her and it's not-suddenly it's not too bad and she wants-she wants--

He bends down, tongue tracing the indentations she'd left in her lip with her teeth as he pulls out, slowly, flesh dragging on flesh and she shivers at how good it feels, all this delicious friction and before she can stop herself she's winding her legs around him. He's muttering under his breath, breathing out filthy words of promise, begging her to open up for his cock and she arches and he slides back in, home, deeper than before and they both groan.

The next moments are blurs in her memory, hazy vague moments of pleasure and movement and sweat and groans and bliss and moonlight reflected off the water in Dean's eyes as he fucked her, fucked her open on that Massachusetts beach for the first time in her life.

She doesn't come with him inside of her, which she didn't expect to, but he goes down on her afterward. Soothes her abused flesh with his mouth and she comes harder with his tongue inside of her and fingers dancing on her clit than she can ever remember. He drops her off in the wee, misty hours of the morning in front of her clapboard house with a lingering kiss. She watches the red of his taillights disappear and then makes her way into the house, lower body sore but feeling like she'd taken one more giant step towards who she wanted to be and away from who she was.

...

They spend the next week touching and fucking every chance they can get. In the theater, in his car in the parking lot of her uncle's restaurant, three more times on the beach and the night before he leaves, they spend together in the Sea Shell Motor Inn, spending hours touching and licking and then fall asleep curled around each other.

He wakes her the next morning when he opens the door to head outside, duffel in hand and the cold creeps in under the blankets, tickles damp fingers along her flesh until she shivers awake, stomach clenching a little at the realization that their time is coming to an end. She'd known it, had thought herself prepared for it but it still made her heart twist to see him tossing his belongings in the trunk. Not that she had any illusions about this being a long-term affair. But she'd come to care for him anyway, wished she could do more to heal the clouds of pain she often saw in his eyes. She snags a worn black tee that's laying on the floor by her side of the bed and tugs it over her head, enjoying the way it smells like him.

She makes her way to the door, watches him in the soft, gray light of the morning and smiles when he turns. He grins back and makes his way over to her, stopping and fidgeting a bit. She stands on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to his lips, not saying anything and he smiles as she pulls away, a little sadly. He pulls her back in then and kisses her deeply, leaving her breathless as he walks away without a word.

Maria stays long enough to watch his car disappear down the road and then to gather her clothes and lock the door behind her before starting the short walk back to her house in bare feet, a little sad but surprisingly with no regrets.

Two weeks later as she pulls out her driveway, tiny Civic filled with her worldly possessions, she thinks of Dean and smiles. Pulls away with a wave out her window at her parents and starts down the road towards the setting sun, towards Bronxville and possibilities and Sarah Lawrence and blue hair and the rest of her life.

END

Read the sequel: My Voice Is My Disguise