by Aaron Grunn
muscles felt. He remembered taking turns in Tom's Impala at over a hundred miles an hour. He would not let Smitty have his way.
"I don't care what happened," Smitty said and whipped out a stun gun with one of his hands. It was the kind that shot out prongs.
John froze and stepped back.
Smitty grinned. "That's right. Stay out of this."
"No," John said and stepped forward.
Smitty pointed the gun and fired. John could see them coming at him slowly. He let them touch his clothes, and they grabbed his sweatshirt. The prongs started to chatter their electric talk. John smiled at Smitty. Everything was slow motion and he felt stronger than ever. He grabbed the gun and looked Smitty in the eye. "Last chance."
Smitty backed off, released Jessica, got in his car, and drove off.
"Thank you," Jessica said and kissed John on his cheek.
John blushed. "You're welcome," he said, and was further embarrassed when it came out as a series of cracks and squeaks.
Inside Jessica's house, John couldn't help but crane his neck at the expansive high ceiling of the lobby. "This place is large," he said, sounding rather stupid when he heard the echo.
"It's just a house," Jessica said.
John turned his head this way and that, trying to understand what was "just" about this house.
"Let's go. My room's upstairs," Jessica said.
They walked up the carpeted stairs and into a room that John was certain was larger than his entire apartment. "This is your room?"
"You like it?" she said with a smirk.
"It's nice," John said. The house had always seemed huge from outside, but he never imagined the rooms in his head. There was an excessive amount of pink, from the bed sheets to the curtains, while all the furniture was white. The door to the walk-in closet was wide open, and John could see the room sized space for clothes. The bed, a sleigh bed, was neatly made, and the dresser, with a large mirror on it, seemed wide enough for a troop of actresses. There was something excessive about it all. His eyes shot over to Jessica who had taken off her shoes, and pants and walked into the closet to find something to wear.
John tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. He'd never seen a woman's thighs in person before. Once he'd walked in on his mother changing in her bedroom. She had a bathrobe on, and the front was open, only slightly. He turned his head away as soon as he could. He wasn't sure he saw anything, or at least he tried to tell himself that he hadn't. He felt an odd guilt and shame after that moment with his mother, but for the most part he managed to forget it.
Here, with Jessica, and her legs, full and beckoning, he felt a tinge of guilt, but there was something else, something more powerful than he'd felt before.
She closed the door behind her. "Do you want something to eat or drink?" she asked. "I have a fridge in here."
He could hear her rustling inside the closet, and instead of answering, or being amazed that she had a fridge in her room, he tried to picture her without a shirt on. When she came out, she was dressed in short shorts and a t-shirt. John felt light-headed.
"Well?" she asked.
He formed some words to say and when he pushed them out, he realized that his vocal chords weren't doing what he wanted. He could feel sweat coming down his armpits. He was certain that he stunk and that his armpits were soaked.
The look Jessica's mother gave him flashed through his head. "Are your parents here?"
"Oh, no. My mother is out on some social meeting at the club."
John had no clue that there was such a thing as "the club" in this town. "Uhh. The homework?"
"That's right," she said. "You don't want anything to eat or drink?" she asked again, rustling through her backpack.
"I'm fine," John said, taking his eyes off Jessica, who was leaning over and facing away from him, because he wanted to stop sweating and speak properly. He noticed the fridge, a half-sized one, in the corner and was further impressed. Next to it was a television set with numerous electronics underneath it for movies. He couldn't imagine going back to his apartment.
"Ready?"
John came over to the bed. Jessica was lying down with the books on it. "What was the homework?"
"Here," she said and patted the bed next to her.
He lay down and stared at the book, but he couldn't read. All he could hear was the sound of his heart, the sheets when Jessica moved, and her smell of sweat and perfume. Surely she knew what she was doing?
She moved closer to him, and he felt her hair on his forearm and her thigh touch his pants and the sheets crumple. They were soft, the sheets, and her thighs too. He tried to breath and wondered if she thought he was a freak, if the stun gun had scared her. But then why would she be here with him? Her hand touched his, and he felt his entire body react in unison. He had to look at her; he just had to. He did and he felt her breath close to his.
She wasn't smiling, in fact she seemed as nervous as he was, but he brushed her reaction away as he was sure that she couldn't have been as frayed as he. As if working on its own, his hand reached out to touch her chin. Except it missed and landed on the top of her shirt, right where her breasts started.
John expected that she would kick him out of the house for that. He thought about pulling it away, then decided not to. She continued to stare at him.
He took several deep breaths and felt a calmness closing over his body, like the first few moments when he'd closed his eyes driving the car. Except he didn't want to close his eyes. He leaned forward and kissed her. Or at least he placed his lips on hers. He rested them there, then wondered what else he was supposed to do.
When he felt her tongue, he was shocked, then decided that he wasn't about to pull back now. In the back of his mind he was going through all the advice he'd ever garnered from the books he read and the movies he watched, and hearing some of the more experienced boys talking in the locker room, and he decided that the tongue was part of it. He pushed his tongue against hers and felt another exhilaration. Now he wished that he'd asked his uncle questions about what to do in such a situation instead of about a father who he would never see. Still, he was glad he had watched all those arty French movies.
They pulled back and John could feel himself burning up. Jessica's face was red as well. Her eyes almost looked half asleep, but she was breathing hard.
John pushed his hand elsewhere and was further surprised when she didn't object.
They didn't do any homework. In fact, John was certain, when he left, that book she opened was still on the ground where it fell. She'd ushered him out when she got a call from her mother, but by that time he was exhausted.
Her skin is what he remembered the most. He had seen more than he ever imagined and that exposure of her to him, and him to her, touched a place in his mind that still glowed with warmth as he walked to his apartment.
Second by second he tried to recreate what'd happened, but failed and only relived the large bursts of emotion from Jessica's bed: the touching; the warmth of her body and breath; the moments that came close to tickling, but then somehow became something else; the sounds she started to make and that he, in any other situation, would have thought silly, but only made him feel larger; the moment of absolute bliss that spread from a point to the rest of his body, bursting into his mind; then the withering of his mind and body in catharsis. Afterwards, they'd lain there, and he might have heard her speak, but he was too happy to reply. Was she talking about pills?
As John rounded the corner to get to the main street that his apartment building faced, he saw a man who he knew shouldn't have been there. John pretended to walk straight while he tried to see what it was about this man that made every molecule in his body, which only a second ago was floating in the air of happiness, growl and snap.
The man sported slicked back hair, a toothpick in his mouth, and a black trench coat. The man didn't seem all that seedy, not compared to the types that usually hung around the apartment parking lot, but he did have an air about him that, glan
cing one way then another, seemed malicious in a smart way.
As John walked on the other side of the main road, he kept his eye on the man and saw another man walk out of his apartment door. John checked his watch. His mother should be back by now. So what was the man doing at their place? The man who walked out of his apartment, also wearing a black trench coat, talked to the man with the toothpick. They scanned the area.
It was almost dark, and John was certain they couldn't see him. He walked until he couldn't see the parking lot again and crossed the road. He headed in several blocks and cut across the back of a supermarket. He leaped over a fence and into a trench. He'd been here before, and he knew that it led to the back of his apartment building. He trudged his way across to his apartment. The small stream soaked through his shoes.
He snuck between a couple cars and heard two men speaking. He peered to see the two men he'd seen earlier coming right for him. He rolled under a car and held his breath. He hoped that they hadn't seen him. His superior vision didn't allow him to know what others could see.
John watched as two pairs of shoes came to a stop near his head.
"What do you think? I'm not waiting here all night," one said. His voice was graveled and sharp.
"I don't want to either, but if they tell us to..." said another man. This one had a cooler voice, as if he were born to calm people down.
"Christ where do you think he could be?"
"No idea. His bitch mom
