Read Online Althea and Oliver by Cristina Moracho - Free Book Online

out back, expanding the gene pool,” Oliver says.
    â€œFuck yourself,” Coby says.
    â€œI swear on my eyes,” Oliver says. “Some girl with zippers.”
    â€œUnbelievable. He looks like a clown, he smells like toothpaste, and he’s still getting more action than either of us. It’s a sad fucking state of affairs.”
    â€œJealousy is not a good look for you,” Valerie says.
    â€œPlease, like you wouldn’t switch places with him in a second,” Coby says.
    â€œFair’s fair. He saw her first. Oliver, come here.”
    â€œI’ll hold it for him,” Althea says, taking the loaded funnel from Valerie. “Oliver, get down on your knees.”
    â€œWhatever we’re doing,” Coby says, “I want to be next.”
    Oliver can’t figure out how to open his throat. His lungs fill with liquid, and he tears the tube from his mouth, spilling the rest of its contents across the floor in a thin foamy puddle. He wheezes but can’t draw in any air; for a few panicked seconds, he’s suffocating. Finally, some of the beer comes out his nose and he coughs up the rest, spraying it across Althea’s bare legs while everyone hoots with laughter. She bends over to dry her knees with a dish towel, and Oliver, still on the floor, gets a quick look up her skirt, a harrowing glimpse of the space between the tops of her thighs, a flash of blue panties and taut cotton. It’s so quick it’s over before it’s begun, but it’s just long enough to make him regret his earlier comment.
First, I would have to pretend that you’re a girl.
She’s a girl, all right.
    Coby asks Oliver to be his partner for beer pong instead, and Oliver can’t say no. Every time he tries to leave the table, Coby asks him to stay for just one more game. By the time he makes it back upstairs, there’s no sign of Althea anywhere. He wanders around in a gentle haze. Things seem to be operating on a three- or four-second delay. That’s fine with him. Pretty much everything is fine with him. Eventually he finds his way into the master bedroom. A sliver of light shines under the door of the attached bathroom. As he raises his hand to knock, there’s a crash and the spectacular, decadent sound of heavy glass shattering into a thousand pieces.
    â€œHey,” he says, knocking on the door. The occupant gasps. He recognizes that sharp intake of air. “Althea, is that you in there making all that beautiful music?”
    â€œOllie?” she whispers, regressing to his childhood nickname. She opens the door a crack and looks around frantically. Satisfied there are no witnesses, she grabs him by the wrist, pulling him inside the bathroom and locking the door. “I did a bad thing.”
    The bathroom is large and opulent. There’s a glass-enclosed shower in one corner, an enormous Jacuzzi in another, and a bathmat between them as thick and soft as the carpet in Althea’s living room. Dried flowers hang from the walls and lavender clay pots of potpourri are lined up in a row on the toilet tank. A series of vanity bulbs frame a large blank square on the wall above the sink, and below them, twinkling like a galaxy of fallen stars, the mirror lies shattered and dazzling across the porcelain.
    â€œDid you do that?” he asks.
    â€œI thought it was the medicine cabinet, so I tried to open it, and it came off the wall instead,” she says.
    â€œWhy were you trying to get into the medicine cabinet?”
    â€œIt’s sort of great-looking, isn’t it?”
    The light from all the vanity bulbs reflecting off the fragments piled in the sink is a gorgeous, arresting sight. He’s never seen anything like it. It makes him think of all the antiques in Althea’s house, all the glass figurines that make him so nervous, all the things people buy with abandon because they think they’re so lovely, and none of them compares to the