Bastard Bachelor Society (The Bachelors Club)

by Sara Ney

  “Brooks, do you even know how many nights we’ve hung out this week?”

  “Two.” He is extremely confident for someone so wrong, butt planting itself in the center of my sofa, remote control already in his hand. He holds up the peace sign then says, “Two,” again.

  I make a buzzer sound. “Uh, try four.” Then, for his edification, I explain so there is no question that I’m right. “Saturday we rented movies and had takeout, Sunday you came over for lazy Sunday, Monday was soup and grilled cheese, and today is reality TV Tuesday. So yeah, I’m right—it’s been four nights.”

  Brooks sits up on the couch like a shot has been fired. “Fuck.”

  I throw my hands up. “Now what?”

  “I have to go.”

  Of course he does. Because he’s a weirdo.

  After he’s gone and I’m in bed, lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, the last thing I wonder before drifting off to sleep is if his reaction has anything to do with this mysterious club he and his friends have…

  14

  Brooks

  I’m at her place again.

  And again and again.

  Like a bad habit I’ve picked up and can’t kick, I’ve been flocking to Abbott’s apartment like it’s my second home. Except I slipped up last week and stayed far too many days in a row, breaking a rule I fabricated for the BBS.

  Rule 2: No seeing the same woman more than three nights a week. Mix it up.

  At least I have half the rule locked down. But for real, why would I ‘mix it up’ when Abbott is across the hall? So fucking convenient not having to go to a bar to find someone to spend time with—even if we aren’t hooking up and I haven’t had sex in…

  Since I met her.

  I’ve already abandoned trying to piece together the timeline.

  Why?

  Because lounging on Abbott’s couch has become my second full-time job. Head propped on a pillow facing the television is my new favorite position (right below sitting at my drafting table, creating).

  I stretch and yawn, slothful fuck I find myself becoming.

  Truly, it’s fantastic in Abbott’s place. I’ve known her a few short weeks and already her apartment feels like a second home, that whore-able cat excluded.

  I keep telling myself being here isn’t breaking any of the club rules because she and I aren’t anything except friends, but the more time I spend with her, the bigger the lie that becomes.

  Right now, at this moment, I’m drunk on laziness and the wine we’ve been slowly sipping on.

  Red. Warm. Delicious.

  I stroke the sofa with the back of my hand while Desdemona Terror Pussy looks on, jealousy gleaming in her black, beady eyes.

  “Your couch is really comfortable.”

  Addicting.

  Kind of like Abbott, if I’m being honest.

  “I know. I’m in love with it.”

  “You should ask it to marry you.” I laugh dumbly. Laugh a bit harder at the expression moving across her face, first surprise, then—she rolls those blue eyes. Just as I was suspecting she would.

  Abbott Margolis does not disappoint, and she’s not as mature as she wants me to believe. I’ve seen her do a happy jig in the kitchen when I agree to watch her favorite show. I’ve seen her Daffy Duck slippers and her Justin Bieber hoodie, sometimes worn at the same time.

  I’ve also seen her fist-pump during previews for the new Disney cartoon releasing soon. “I’m so going to see that,” she says, every single time it comes on.

  “I should ask the couch to marry me?” she mocks. “You’re so stupid sometimes.”

  I am.

  I really, really am.

  “Come on, we’ve already established that I’m a moron with bad taste in jokes.” Then I do something I never thought I would do: scoot closer to the backside of the sofa, pressing my body into it to create more room. Pat on the cushions, on the empty space in front of me, inviting Abbott to fill the space. I invite her to lie down beside me and—dear Lord—cuddle?

  Cuddle.

  Me?

  “Are you saying you want me to snuggle you?”

  Fuck yeah, I want to cuddle or snuggle or whatever. “That’s not at all what I’m saying.”

  Her blue gaze gets narrow. “Then why are you patting the cushion like that? It’s clearly an invitation.”

  I make a pfft sound. “Patting the cushion like what?”

  “Like this.” Abbott makes a show out of rubbing the soft, suede-like fabric like she’s stroking Desi’s fur, adding a few ahhh noises I wouldn’t dream of making. “Come here, Abbott, come snuggle.”

  “All I’m saying is it’s damn comfortable in this position and you should be comfy, too. It’s Lazy Sunday.” One of a few we’ve already shared together…like all of them since we met.

  “That’s true, it is Lazy Sunday.” My beautiful neighbor weighs her options, slowly—though not reluctantly—joining me when I situate the fluffy cushions, pound them into submission, uncurl myself so I’m lying down, leaving plenty of room for Abbott in front of me.

  I am the big spoon.

  Not that we’re spooning—God no.

  But if we were…

  Silence fills the room as we watch a comedian on television joking on a stage in New York City, the crowd cracking up when he tears his shirt off and begins spinning tales about his wife and daughters.

  I chuckle, looking down my nose to see if Abbot is amused, too.

  A serene smile etches her face, brows arched.

  My head flops back down on the pillow, but not before catching a whiff of her hair.

  Shit.

  Almonds? Cherries? Both?

  What is that?

  It smells like I want to stick my nose in her hair and inhale.

  Intoxicating.

  “The last time I lay on a couch with a guy, we played a little game called Extreme Cuddles.”

  That has my immediate attention and I perk up. “I’m sorry, whozeewhatnow?”

  “Extreme Cuddles is the best. I invented it.” She reaches forward and nabs her water from the coffee table, sips from the straw, then lies back down next to me, ass nuzzled firmly into my half-hard dick. Without a care in the world and seemingly unaware of my growing erection, Abbott continues. “I was dating this guy my sophomore year of college. I lived in the sorority house and invented this one amazing game.” She uses air quotes to emphasize the word game. “Anyway, I had a sofa in my room because I drew the long straw for a single that year, and the place was huge. I could do cartwheels in it if I wanted to, and this one time I actually did. I’d gotten a—”

  “Abbott, get to the point,” I bellow, practically in her ear since it’s directly in front of my mouth.

  “Sorry. As I was saying.” She clears her throat and inadvertently wiggles her ass. “Extreme Cuddling is basically like…a test in self-control.”

  “How?”

  “Because you lie next to each other, watching television or a movie—whatever—like we’re doing right now.”

  “So?”

  “With next to or no clothes on, and you try not to have any kind of sexual relations.” Abbott’s chuckle is low, like she’s fondly remembering a time when she lay on a couch in her sorority house in college, naked with some poor sap. “There are blankets involved. You know, to preserve modesty. And because sometimes it gets cold.”

  “Right.” My mind is wandering, has gone so far down a rabbit hole of perverse fantasies. Plaid skirts and nerdy glasses. Netflix with no chill and alll fuckery. Skin. Tits. “Give me all the details and don’t leave anything out. No skimping.”

  “Okay, well…this guy I was dating—we were lying there, on my sweet, sweet couch, fully dressed, obviously.”

  “Obviously.” Cause you lived in a sorority house, and no one ever had sex there, I say to myself acerbically.

  My neighbor cranes her neck to look back at me. “Are you being sarcastic?”

  One hundred percent. “Me? No.”

&nbs
p; Her eyes narrow. “You want to hear this story or not?”

  I nod emphatically.

  “Then cool it with the sass talk.”

  “Fine.” I press my lips together so she sees how sincere I am, how desperate I am to hear this story, although I can already tell you how this fun little tale ends:

  Me, with a giant boner.

  Abbott presents me with her back, “unintentionally” wiggling against my cock to resettle herself.

  Fuck.

  “We were watching some lame horror movie that wasn’t scary at all,” she’s saying, oblivious to my torture. “The special effects were terrible, and I knew my date was sweaty, so I told him to take his hoodie off. As he’s doing that, I say, ‘While you’re at it, you could take off your T-shirt, too.’”

  “And he did?”

  “Naturally.” Abbott pauses, reflecting with a smile before continuing to torment me with a lack of detail so egregious I want to groan. Get to the extreme part of the snuggling! Who gives a shit about what was on TV? Get to the sex and nudity.

  “So he takes his shirt off, and he’s just lying there in his jogging pants or whatever. I think that’s what they were, some gray, baggy pants. And he had boxers on—which I only know because I had my hand halfway down his pants and kept rubbing the fabric.”

  The visual of Abbott with her hand down my pants, stroking the soft cotton of my boxer briefs has me swallowing the lump forming in my tight throat.

  I nod behind her, fingers white-knuckling the blanket. “Uh-huh.”

  “But now he’s the only one lying there half-dressed. So, I stand up and take off my bottoms.”

  “Like how?” I play dumb.

  “You know, I took off my pants.”

  “Your pants?”

  Abbott cocks her head, and I can hear the wheels turning. She isn’t sure if I’m bullshitting her, or if I’m just so stupid I don’t know what it means for a chick to pull her pants off.

  “Maybe you should show me.”

  She scoffs, not falling for my trick. “Ha ha, I’m not falling for that.”

  “If I take off my shirt, you can take off your pants, then it will be fair. I really want to know what Extreme Cuddles is, but I need a visual.” I shrug casually. “That’s the architect part of me—I need to see the entire picture. Draw me a map.”

  A treasure map to the P and the V.

  “Ugh, okay, but only because I know you won’t get turned on.” She huffs, climbing off the couch to stand, and slowly peels off the blue velour bottoms that have been driving me insane, tickling my thighs.

  While she’s taking off her pajama bottoms, I peel off my T-shirt and lie back down, watching the rest of the show.

  Her ass in a hot pink thong. Slim thighs. Smooth butt cheeks.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Abort, my head cries.

  Touch her, my dick urges.

  Everyone calm the fuck down, my brain shouts, irritated.

  Abbott climbs back under the covers, dragging them up her body to cover her bare lower half, then goes on with her story. “Alright, so he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and I wasn’t wearing bottoms. And at some point, I finally say, ‘Maybe you should take off your bottoms, too.’”

  “What did he say?”

  “His eyes got real wide, and he goes, ‘Just my pants?’ and I said, ‘How about everything? That makes the game really dicey.’” She laughs at the memory. “I’ve never seen a guy pull his underwear off so fast in my entire freaking life.”

  “Wanna make a bet?” I can’t help boasting.

  I’ve got at least sixteen years on the pissant who played grabby-grabby with college-aged Abbott, and I bet I can move ten times faster, because I’m not a fucking boy.

  And just because I’m a grown-ass man doesn’t mean my hormones aren’t raging like a freight train.

  “Pfft. No one can get their pants off faster than Billie Belmont.”

  Hold up—pause.

  First of all, what the fuck kind of name is that, and where the hell was she meeting her friends? The Junior league? Jesus Christ, I thought our names were bad, but Billie Belmont?

  “When do you get to the part where you take your shirt off?” I desperately want to know, dying of curiosity, wondering if she’ll take her top off now. I mean—what’s the big deal? Knowing my neighbor, she undoubtedly has four layering shirts under the pajama top she has on.

  “Not for a while. We lay there watching the show, the poor kid. I swear, he was sweating before he removed his clothes, but afterward? Wow. You’d think it had been raining outside he was so moist.”

  “Sexy.”

  “Aw, thanks.”

  “I didn’t mean you—I meant the word moist.”

  “He was though. Moist, that is, getting the blanket all sticky. And I told him so.”

  She has seriously got to stop saying the M word. It’s making my ass cheeks pucker. “Jesus, that poor kid.”

  “Yeah.” More laughing. More wiggling. More chugging from the water on the table. “So, I’m wondering when you’re going to rip off all your clothes like Billie did, just to prove a point.”

  “What point would that be?”

  “That you can keep your hands off me while we’re lying here.”

  Her delivery is casual, as if she didn’t just drop a naked bomb. As if she isn’t taunting me with nudity, which leads to touching, which leads to sex and orgasms and bliss.

  “The point of the game is temptation. Sexual tension.” The worst kind of torture. “That’s not our endgame here.”

  Because we’re friends. And friends don’t fuck.

  “Just so you know, despite what you think, keeping your hands off me would be more difficult than you think.” The little shit actually yawns—or, feigns a yawn. Shit, I can’t tell if it’s real or fake. “You don’t have the balls to lie there and not touch me and not get turned on,” she goads, patting her mouth, bored and gloating, like she’s already won some bet between us I wasn’t aware she’d made.

  Little does she know, I win everything.

  “You don’t have the lady balls to lie there and not beg me to put my hands on your tits.”

  “Pfft, please—you’re forgetting I’ve played this game before.” Abbott stretches, uses her core muscles to rise to a sitting position, reaches for the hem of her top, and lifts it.

  I was wrong; it’s one shirt, and Abbott isn’t wearing a bra.

  Covering her breasts, she lowers herself back down and weasels her hot little body into mine.

  “What was that idiot’s name you dated in college?” I need her to say it again—maybe it will make my half-hard boner deflate.

  “Billie Belmont.”

  Stupid fucking name.

  “Yeah—I’m about to smoke that guy in the pants removal competition.”

  “Brooks.” Abbott laughs, smooth expanse of back taunting me. “It’s not a competiti—”

  Too late. I’m shucking off my motherfuckin’ pants faster than that little douche did, guaranteed, kicking them toward the foot of the sofa, my legs caught in the ankle of one. I give it a good shake until they flop limply on the floor.

  “Dear Lord, drama queen.” She’s laughing at me, but there’s an edge to it telling me she’s nervous. Not as unaffected as she’s pretending to be while I lie here in all my naked glory, yanking at the blanket neatly folded on the back of the couch and pulling it over my semi-boner.

  “Now what?” I want to know.

  “Now we lie here and watch TV.” Her tone implies that I’m an idiot for asking, her eyes glued to the screen in front of us.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes, just lie there.”

  “Naked?”

  “Duh. That’s where the extreme part comes in.”

  “This is fucking stupid,” I complain, not sure where to put my hands and on the verge of bitching about how cold this living room has suddenly just become. My nut sac is now the size of two walnuts, despite my growing penis.


  “You can touch me if you’re weak.” Abbott isn’t looking back, but I hear her rolling her eyes. “But the point is to hold out and have a little self-control.”

  “The fuck, though—I have nowhere to put my hands!” Do I actually sound like a whiney little bitch, or do I just sound like one in my head?

  “Where’d you put your hands before we took off our clothes?”

  “On my hip.” On my own body, keeping them to myself.

  “Welll.”

  She wants me to keep my hands to myself when she’s lying there in a pink thong?

  What the actual fuck, Abbott…

  “Did you have something to say? Jesus, you’re breathing so hard it sounds like you just ran eighty laps around the high school track in gym class,” she taunts as my dick strains to poke its way through the thin strip of fabric of her underwear and into her ass canal. “Relax.”

  “I am relaxed!” comes out harsher than I intend, but how does she actually expect me to behave when she smells like roses and fucking sunshine and all that bullshit?

  And to think: I was dumb enough to think I could handle a dumb game she invented in college. Leave it to a sorority girl to invent a dick-tease game.

  There’s a man on Abbott’s TV talking some gibberish that makes Abbott laugh and me scowl, because her entire body does this shake—shoulders brushing my chest, butt rubbing my nether regions. Flesh and heat and holes wanting to be filled.

  The guy says something else and Abbott snorts.

  Okay, maybe snorting is not so cute.

  She giggles.

  Cute.

  Snorts again.

  Not so cute.

  All the while she taunts me with her naked flesh and irresistible perfume, one Nan probably bought her at a random fancy-schmancy French boutique in the Congo where they use the sweat from rare butterflies and liquid diamonds. Or, you know—Bloomingdale’s.

  Where do highfalutin socialite dames shop?

  It’s intoxicating and driving my hormones bonkers, and now I’m fixated on it. Fixated on the tiny hairs at the back of her neck, shorter than the rest and wispy because she has it pulled off to one side, swept back to bare the long column of her neck.

  I squirm.

  Cough.