Page 23 of Howl for Me
He taps the top page. “So well that Johnny left his script and stormed out the door in excitement.”
“I was just—”
“You were just on your way to drop them off,” he says, cutting me off again with a grin that’s all teeth.
“What? No, I—”
“Don’t know his address,” he finishes, already pulling a pen from behind his ear and scribbling something down on the back of a production memo.
He tears the paper off and hands it to me before I can argue. “You do now.”
I stare at it. “Hector, I don’t even have a—”
“You have legs. You have the script. That’s more than enough.”
He turns back toward his office, done with the conversation before I can get another word in.
I look at the address in my hand.
A simple delivery that’s all this is. Drop off his script and leave.
Forty-five minutes on a crowded, uncomfortable bus later, I’m standing on Johnny’s porch, staring at his sun-bleached welcome mat. I stand on the doorstep longer than I probably need to, clutching the script. Just get this over with Cassidy.
I knock and wait, heart pounding. No answer. I lean in and listen. Somewhere inside, faint and distant, music is playing. So he’s home.
I knock again, louder this time. Still nothing.
I glance down at the script in my arms, then back at the door. I should leave. I should just stick it in the mailbox or leave it on the porch and walk away. I came all this way, though. Hector will know if I didn’t follow through. And I’m not about to give Johnny any ammo to call me unreliable.
So I try the knob. It turns.
The door creaks open an inch, and I immediately want to close it again, but my voice betrays me.
“Johnny?” I call out, hovering in the doorway. “It’s me. Hector made me drop off the script.”
Nothing. The music’s a little louder now, spilling into the hall, echoing just slightly off the walls. I step inside slowly, cautiously, like I’m walking into a werewolf’s den uninvited, because I fucking am.
“Just dropping this on the table,” I say, more to myself than to him.
The bathroom door is cracked just enough to let a slice of steam curl into the hall. The shower’s on. He must not have heard me over the water and the music. I can’t help but smile when I hear his voice. He’s singing. Soft, low, just a hum and a few lazy lyrics slurred between breaths. I take a step forward. The script is still tight in my arms. Just drop it off, I tell myself. Coffee table. Out the door.
"Cass.” his voice filters through the music
“Yeah,” I call out automatically, feeling caught, half-turning toward the bathroom. “I’m just leaving the—”
He says it again.
Only this time, there is no mistaking, it’s a moan.
“Cass.”
The wet, steady rhythm of his hand. The slick glide of skin meeting skin. The soft grunt of breath catching in his throat.
My whole body locks. My breath stalls in my throat, heat rushing so fast through me I feel dizzy. I should leave. I should turn around, walk out, pretend I never heard any of this.
But I don’t. I stand there, feet rooted to the floor, stomach flipping, pulse pounding between my legs. Water rushes behind his voice, but it doesn’t drown out the sound of his hand working faster, wet, urgent, and obscene. There’s no mistaking it now. No room for denial.
Johnny Howler is jerking off in the shower, and he’s doing it to me.
